A judge Thursday dismissed four of the eight criminal charges against Robert Altman, the powerful Washington attorney accused of conspiring with the the now-defunct bank BCCI to defraud federal regulators.
The dismissals, which included the most serious charge of bribery, dealt a major setback to the prosecution, which has spent the last four months trying to prove to a jury that Altman lied and cheated in consort with BCCI officers.Judge John A.K. Bradley of New York State Supreme Court offered no explanation of why he threw out the counts, which came in response to a defense motion to dismiss the entire indictment.
Altman, an influential attorney in the nation's capital, was a senior executive of First American Bankshares Inc., Washington's biggest bank. Prosecutors allege he allowed the scandal-plagued Bank of Credit and Commerce International to gain secret control of that bank.
Federal charges against Altman and former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford were dropped in April.