Keating Quits After Stinging Legal Setbacks : Thrifts: The former American Continental Corp. chief will concentrate on his own defense. Lawyers, accountants and even economists involved in the thrift debacle face new scrutiny.

Charles H. Keating Jr., a central figure in the nation’s savings and loan scandal, announced Friday that he resigned as chairman and chief executive of American Continental Corp., the Phoenix development company he formed in the 1970s.

The resignation comes on the heels of recent stinging court setbacks for Keating, including a decision Thursday by U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin in Washington that upheld the government’s seizure of Lincoln Savings & Loan last year. Lincoln Savings had been owned by American Continental.

American’s other officers and directors resigned with Keating.

“The company no longer has any officers and directors,” said James Fedder, an outside attorney for American Continental, which has been operating in bankruptcy court.

A statement from Keating, issued by Chicago attorney Stephen C. Neal, indicated that his move was sparked by Sporkin’s ruling, which effectively cut short the 66-year-old financier’s effort to regain control of Lincoln. American Continental bought the thrift in 1984 for $51 million.

“It has become clear that my client must now concentrate all his energy on aggressively defending the legal charges against him,” Neal said. Federal banking regulators have filed civil racketeering charges against Keating for the way he ran Lincoln.

Meanwhile, federal regulators Friday promised intensified enforcement action against lawyers, accountants, appraisers and other professionals who contributed to the collapse of savings and loan associations across the country.

“No more vital question could be posed . . . (than) where were the professionals?” Harris Weinstein, chief counsel for the Office of Thrift Supervision, said at a news conference.

OTS officials said their efforts to punish the misdeeds of professionals were given a big boost by Sporkin’s ruling. In denying Keating’s efforts, Sporkin complained that lawyers and accountants approved numerous “clearly improper transactions” that contributed to Lincoln’s $2-billion collapse.

Although the ruling applies strictly to Lincoln, OTS officials believe that the scathing criticism by Sporkin, a respected jurist and former enforcement chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will influence the legal and regulatory climate.

“I’m very pleased Judge Sporkin has identified an area which has concerned me since the day I walked into this job,” said OTS Director T. Timothy Ryan Jr.

Sporkin, he said, “states our view, which you will see reflected in enforcement actions.”

OTS officials said the agency is conducting many detailed investigations that could lead to substantial fines or the banning of culpable lawyers and accountants from representing S&Ls; before the regulatory agency.

Other federal agencies have filed suits seeking financial damages from lawyers and accountants who represented S&Ls; that collapsed into insolvency and were seized by the federal government.

But the OTS could go significantly further in punishing professional misdeeds. It could act to bar individuals or groups from representing any federally insured thrift.

The professionals--lawyers, accountants, appraisers and economists--must share significant blame “in a great many thrift failures,” Weinstein said. “We expect to move against those professionals in a vigorous way.”

Weinstein declined to discuss whether OTS is considering action against lawyers and accountants involved with Lincoln. But he said Keating, chairman of Lincoln’s parent firm, “and his colleagues with the cooperation and assistance of their service providers, abused depositors and the American taxpayers to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.”

Weinstein said professionals played an important role in Lincoln’s misdeeds: Accountants treated sham transactions as real sales, and lawyers threatened personal damage suits against federal regulatory officials to inhibit them from taking action against the troubled S&L.;

“In this case, what was done couldn’t have been done without the help of the professionals,” Weinstein said. “Highly sophisticated transactions are very unlikely to be done without the assistance of professionals.”

Weinstein added economists to the list of professionals who contributed to thrift problems. In some cases, he said, economists advised thrift managers on highly sophisticated, highly risky methods of computerized securities trading. The economists could be held accountable if they failed to disclose the true extent of the risk, he said.

The collapse of Lincoln, which was burdened by a portfolio of bad real estate investments, will ultimately cost taxpayers $2 billion. The figure includes expenses associated with paying off depositors, whose accounts are insured up to $100,000, and selling unprofitable assets.

In his ruling, Sporkin said the government was justified in its seizure of Lincoln last year and rejected Keating’s challenge of the takeover. He said Keating and other top executives “abused their positions” through behavior that “amounted to a looting of Lincoln.”

Sporkin’s ruling Thursday was the second court setback for Keating in two days. On Wednesday, a federal judge partially froze Keating’s assets and required him to disclose his personal finances to government regulators within five days. Keating, reportedly worth $39 million in 1987, now claims that he is broke.