New York businessman and Democrat fundraiser Hassan Nemazee used fake documents to borrow $74 million to repay a loan from Citigroup Inc. last month, and he may have defrauded another bank of more than $100 million, prosecutors said.
In a letter to the judge in the case dated Tuesday and made public Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorneys John M. Hillebrecht and Daniel W. Levy said Nemazee obtained a line of credit by using the same type of fake documents — fake account statements and forged signatures — that he used to fraudulently obtain the $74 million loan from Citigroup's Citibank unit.
Nemazee was charged criminally last week with bank fraud related to the Citigroup loan, which he repaid Aug. 24.
Nemazee also obtained multiple lines of credit from another financial institution by providing similar false and fraudulent information, prosecutors said, and the loans exceed $100 million.
The government also has sought and obtained the seizure of two accounts Nemazee holds at another financial institution but have not requested any other freeze orders, prosecutors said. None of the banks, other than Citibank, were named in the government's Tuesday letter. In a letter to the court dated Monday, Marc L. Mukasey, a lawyer for Nemazee, said two accounts Nemazee holds at JPMorgan Chase & Co. had been frozen and that Bank of America Corp. has "unilaterally decided to freeze Mr. Nemazee's funds and those of his children."
