Reply #107: Ex-Riggs Manager Won't Testify About Accounts

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http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I53707-2004Jul15

Senate Panel Probes Money From Equatorial Guinea
By Terence O'Hara and Kathleen Day
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 16, 2004; Page A01

A former Riggs Bank manager yesterday invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions from a Senate panel investigating his handling of hundreds of millions of dollars in suspicious transactions for a West African dictator, including why he lugged a 60-pound suitcase stuffed with $3 million in plastic-wrapped cash to Riggs's Dupont Circle branch.

The Senate probe is the latest in a series of investigations into Riggs's once-prestigious embassy banking division, now tarnished by reports that it helped former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet hide millions and that it appears to have allowed its biggest customer, Equatorial Guinea, and that country's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, to siphon oil revenue into his personal accounts. Despite the fact Obiang and his wife made cash deposits of nearly $13 million over a three-year period into their Riggs accounts, the bank never filed a single suspicious activity report to federal regulators as required by law.

The Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations called four current and former Riggs executives to testify yesterday, after releasing the results of its year-long probe into the bank. Simon P. Kareri, who managed Riggs's West African business until he was fired in January, was the only executive to assert his right not to testify against himself.

As details unfolded about the relationship of Riggs and Obiang -- whose government has been under scrutiny by international watchdog organizations for corruption and human rights abuses, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member whose staff conducted the investigation, leaned over and removed his glasses as he pointedly asked Riggs President Lawrence I. Hebert how he could live with himself.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53345-2004Jul15.html