Bert Lance

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Bert Lance (1977)

Thomas Bertram "Bert" Lance (born June 3, 1931 in Gainesville , Georgia ; † August 15, 2013 ) was an American bank manager and politician of the Democratic Party , who in 1977 after only eight months in office as director of the Office of Management and Budget ( OMB) had to resign due to allegations during his previous work as a bank manager.

Life

Lance, a son of the university president Thomas Jackson Lance, studied after attending the High School of Calhoun at the University of Georgia and earned there in 1951 a Bachelor of Arts . He then completed further studies at Louisiana State University and Rutgers University . During this time he also joined the fraternity Sigma Chi . Subsequently, after his marriage to LaBelle David, he joined the family-owned Calhoun First National Bank as a simple clerkand ultimately rose to the position of CEO. In the mid-1960s, he met the then Democratic Senator from Georgia , Jimmy Carter , with whom he became personally friends.

After Carter became governor of Georgia in 1971 , this appointed him the Secretary of Transportation ( Commissioner of the Department of Transportation ) of the state and held this office until 1973. From 1974 to 1976 he was President of the National Bank of Georgia . After Carter's election as US President , he appointed him on January 21, 1977 Director of the Office of Management and Budget. This led the press to investigate his activities and corruption and mismanagement while at Calhoun First National Bank . After months of allegations, he finally resigned on September 23, 1977 to avert harm to the Carter administration . In a subsequent trial before a jury ( jury ) but he was from any kind misconduct acquitted . Nonetheless, William Safire received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1978 for his comments on the so-called "Bert Lance Affair" . In 1981 he returned as chairman of the board of directors of Calhoun First National Bank, and held that position until 1986. During that time, he was also chairman of the Georgia Democratic Party from September 1982 to July 1985. Lance also worked as a trustee of Reinhardt College in Georgia and the American Cancer Society (ACS).

In his role as chairman of the Calhoun First National Bank , he later came back into investigations into the Bank of Credit and Commerce International , which in 1991 was at the center of the largest international financial scandal to date, which was called "The greatest fraud in human history" and as the "over 20 billion robbery" was called. The investigation revealed that Lance received a $ 2.4 million loan from the BCCI in January 1978 and, the following day, his shares in the National Bank of Georgia were given to Ghaith Phararon, a confidante of Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi , who founded BCCI in 1972. In addition, he is said to have acquired a million dollar fortune through the collapse of the BCCI.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bert Lance, confidante of Jimmy Carter, dead at 82
  2. ↑ TIME: The Presidency: Jimmy Behind Closed Doors (September 19, 1977)
  3. ^ Dan Atkinson: Accountants in BCCI net . In: The Guardian. January 8, 1999.
  4. ↑ “$ 20 billion plus heist” cf. Beaty, J. & Gwynne, SC The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. Random House, 1993
  5. ↑ DER SPIEGEL: Personal details (No. 1/1978)
  6. ↑ Entry (ourgeorgiahistory.com)
personal data
SURNAME Lance, Bert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lance, Thomas Bertram (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American bank manager and democratic politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Gainesville , Georgia
DATE OF DEATH 15th August 2013