BCCI Figure to Be Extradited to United States : Banking: Swaleh Naqvi is under house arrest in Abu Dhabi. He is expected to be prosecuted on federal fraud charges.

A key figure in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal will be extradited for prosecution by the Justice Department under an agreement with the government of Abu Dhabi.

Justice Department officials confirmed the agreement Sunday and said they expect Swaleh Naqvi, the top deputy to the founder of BCCI, to be brought to the United States from Abu Dhabi within four months to face bank fraud charges.

Naqvi, now under house arrest in the Persian Gulf emirate, has been indicted in the United States but has never been interviewed by American prosecutors.

“He will be delivered here . . . within 120 days. He’ll be tried, and we hope to convict him,” Gerald Stern, head of the Justice Department’s bank fraud section, said in a telephone interview.

Justice Department officials and a statement issued by the government of Abu Dhabi confirmed the agreement between the U.S. government and the ruling family of Abu Dhabi.

The deal will give U.S. prosecutors access to Naqvi as well as thousands of documents related to the case, the Justice Department said.

The agreement, reached in Geneva after a series of secret meetings, was first reported Sunday by the Washington Post.

In addition to Naqvi’s extradition, the agreement calls for the royal family in Abu Dhabi to give up claims to an estimated $400 million it had invested in the Washington-based First American Bankshares Inc., a former subsidiary of BCCI.

The funds, instead will be used in part to reimburse depositors of BCCI who lost money when the bank closed in 1991. Some of the money also is to be used to help pay severance for 1,000 former First American employees who lost their jobs when the bank’s branches and assets were sold.

In return, U.S. prosecutors have agreed not to pursue criminal charges against the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, who had been the majority shareholder in the defunct BCCI, officials said.

And a $1.5-billion civil suit brought against Zayed by the court-appointed trustee for First American will be dropped, according to the statement issued on behalf of the royal family. Zayed also has agreed to give up the 28% interest he held in First American.

Some of the money being surrendered by Abu Dhabi will be used to help First American trustees pay for “continuing litigation against other parties,” said the statement issued by a Washington public relations firm on behalf of the royal family.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Philip B. Heymann in a statement called the settlement “a remarkable agreement in terms of what we’ve succeeded in getting.”