Judge Denies Plea Change Bid by Banker in Iraq Loan Case

A federal judge refused Monday to allow a former Atlanta bank manager to withdraw his guilty plea to charges that he illegally provided $5 billion in loans that helped Iraq build its war machine.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Marvin H. Shoob in Atlanta said former banker Christopher P. Drogoul had failed to demonstrate that his superiors at Italy’s Banca Nazionale del Lavoro were aware of his loan scheme or that his own admissions were false. Shoob ordered the sentencing hearing for Drogoul to resume today.

Drogoul, 43, was manager of the Atlanta branch of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which is owned by the Italian government. In June, he admitted engineering the loans and concealing them through a maze of bank accounts and financial manipulations. He faces life in prison without parole.

Last month, Drogoul hired a new attorney, Bobby Lee Cook, who last Friday sought to withdraw the guilty plea. He claimed prosecutors ignored evidence that American officials and Drogoul’s superiors in the bank’s home office in Rome were aware of the scheme.

“Mr. Drogoul declines to be made the patsy,” Cook said in a motion filed in support of his request.

But the government said Drogoul had admitted his guilt on numerous occasions to his attorneys and to federal investigators. Prosecutors said he had failed to offer any credible evidence that anyone outside Atlanta was aware of the scheme and had urged the judge to refuse to allow the plea to be withdrawn.

Shoob’s four-page order rejected Drogoul’s claims that he had been misrepresented by his previous lawyer, a public defender. Without judging the quality of the government’s investigation of the BNL case, Shoob also said Drogoul’s allegations did not show that he misunderstood the charges to which he pleaded guilty.