CAUSE OF FAILURE AND MATERIAL LOSS
The Draft Report concludes, "CBC failed and resulted in a material loss to the Bank Insurance Fund because of ineffective corporate governance." DSC concurs with the OIG’s description of CBC’s ineffective corporate governance; however, we disagree that it caused the failure and resulted in the material loss to the FDIC. Ineffective corporate governance resulted in excessive risk taking, disregard for laws and regulations, and questionable asset valuations – all of which exacerbated the potential loss to the FDIC. High-risk lending combined with poor risk management practices caused significant losses for CBC prior to failure and has resulted in deep discounts on assets sold by the FDIC. As receiver, the FDIC has also realized significant losses on the liquidation of certain other assets. However, the largest contributing factor to CBC’s failure and the material loss to the FDIC was fraud perpetrated by insiders of the bank.
On March 31, 2002, CBC reported equity capital of $29.6 million. DSC has identified nominee loans involving the Chairman and the President with an aggregate outstanding balance of approximately $34 million, and additional fraudulent loans may have been passed to the receivership without being identified. A majority of the nominee loans were classified as Loss at the final examination of CBC, and the Division of Resolutions and Receiverships expects minimal collections from any of the nominee loans. Fraud was clearly the proximate cause of CBC’s failure. The magnitude of the fraud also limited the effectiveness of the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) provisions of Section 38 of the FDI Act. (Note: The FDIC has noted previously that PCA does not provide much protection to the deposit insurance funds when rapid dissipation of assets and capital occurs at an institution.)