From: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/part4.htm
The essential details may be found in the article "Who is Jack Ryan?" (Wall Street Journal, Monday, August 1, 1994):
"Attorneys for Mr. Clifford and Mr. Altman included independent counsel Robert Fiske and Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, as well as Robert Bennett, president Clinton's attorney in the Paula Corbin Jones case. And, of course, Arkansas investment banking giant Stephens Inc., which says all connections with the BCCI front men ended in 1978, does acknowledge it handled their initial brokerage for the purchase.
"Indeed, in the early takeover maneuvers Financial General Bankshares, First American's predecessor company, brought a 1978 lawsuit naming 'Bert Lance, Bank of Credit & Commerce International, Agha Hasan Abedhi, Eugene J. Metzger, Jackson Stephens, Stephens Inc., Systematics Inc. and John Does numbers 1 through 25.' The suit was ultimately settled, but intriguingly, briefs for Systematics, a Stephens property, were submitted by a trio of lawyers including C.J. Giroir and Webster L. Hubbell and signed by Hillary Rodham."
One thing I'd note is that years prior to Kerry's investigation of the BCCI scandal, Clifford had been an attorney for John F. Kennedy ("In the Eisenhower years Clifford was not called by the White House, but he remained active in Democratic politics. He was also the personal lawyer for Kennedy, then a young senator from Massachusetts.": "Clark Clifford, Key Adviser to Four Presidents, Dies"), whose family had of course long been linked to Kerry's political career. There is another potential conflict of interest there in that Kerry protected Clifford during the BCCI investigation--jmstein7 I know you're already aware of this, but for the sake of the present discussion here's some details from one of your earlier posts:
SHADY Kerry Flashback (1992): About that BCCI report, Mr. Kerry (Kerry's shady dealings)
There is good reason to ask Mr. Kerry some tough questions about his own involvement in the BCCI scandal - questions he has not yet answered satisfactorily. Mr. Kerry had started the investigation that led to BCCI long ago, when he decided to scrutinize drug money-laundering in Central America. That investigation was begun, according to congressional staffers involved in the probe, in the hope that some tie to George Bush, via the dealings of the CIA, could be found to implicate the president in the drug trade. Instead, as the inquiry progressed, it was Democratic icon Clark Clifford who was implicated.
Mr. Clifford, adviser to presidents and his party's eminence grise, is accused of having been the front man for BCCI when the bank stealthily and illegally bought First American through proxies. Jack Blum, at the time Mr. Kerry's chief investigator, learned of Mr. Clifford's BCCI connection way back in June 1988. Yet months later, in September 1988, Mr. Kerry and Mr. Blum met with Mr. Clifford, who at the time was serving not only as head of First American but as a lawyer for BCCI as well, to discuss some documents that the senator's subcommittee wanted from BCCI. At that meeting Mr. Clifford told Mr. Blum and Mr. Kerry that acquiring the documents wouldn't be necessary because BCCI was on the up and up.
Even though Mr. Blum and Mr. Kerry knew better, they did not confront Mr. Clifford with what they knew about First American. In fact, they let the matter drop. Why? According to Mr. Blum, because "It just didn't seem very important at the time."
It must not have seemed very important months later, either. In the early months of 1989, Mr. Kerry accepted $5,000 in campaign contributions from Mr. Clifford and his associates. The Clifford-BCCI scandal broke in the press some time later, but it was not Mr. Kerry who exposed Mr. Clifford. Indeed, it was not until after the Clifford scandal had ballooned and a few people started asking embarrassing questions about where Mr. Kerry was that the senator threw himself into the BCCI investigation in earnest.
BTW here's an interesting link on this subject, though I can't vouch for the details--don't know enough about the case--I quote it FWIW in generating leads, though:
So Kerry's new job put him at the center of power and meant that he would rub shoulders with the movers and shakers who were financing the Democratic Party. One of these men was David Paul, the owner of CenTrust Savings in Miami and a pal of Ghaith Pharaon. On July 20, 1988, Kerry hosted a reception honoring Paul, one of the largest contributors to the DSCC, and later the senator used Paul's private jet to fly to a DSCC leadership meeting. He was one of forty select guests at a $122,000 dinner thrown by Paul in Miami that December. Ghaith Pharaon was guest of honor. Later, Paul would boast that he had derailed Kerry's investigation. It was not true. But the senator's rising political profile grated on Jack Blum in the summer of 1988 because of some of the people it put Kerry next to.