Bank Of Honolulu

The majority owner of the Bank of Honolulu was arrested at gunpoint in a surprise swoop by FBI agents Wednesday and indicted by a federal grand jury on a charge of fraud in connection with his $300-million bankruptcy case, authorities said. Indonesian-born Sukamto Sia, 42, who fled the U.S. in 1998, was arrested at a creditors meeting that had brought the former developer back to Honolulu from his current home in Macao.

The majority owner of the Bank of Honolulu was arrested at gunpoint in a surprise swoop by FBI agents Wednesday and indicted by a federal grand jury on a charge of fraud in connection with his $300-million bankruptcy case, authorities said. Indonesian-born Sukamto Sia, 42, who fled the U.S. in 1998, was arrested at a creditors meeting that had brought the former developer back to Honolulu from his current home in Macao.

BankAmerica Buys Hawaiian Thrift: The Federal Reserve has approved BankAmerica Corp.'s purchase of Hawaii's largest thrift, owned by an investment group including former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon. BankAmerica, the nation's second-largest banking company with $201 billion in assets, is acquiring the parent company of Honfed Bank of Honolulu, a profitable savings and loan with $2.6 billion in assets. The purchase of H. F. Holdings Inc.

The federal government has filed a $2-million lawsuit in federal court against a Santa Ana mortgage broker alleging that the company defrauded a Hawaiian savings bank. The lawsuit is one of a relatively small number of such suits brought in the past few years by the Justice Department under a 1989 federal law that bailed out the savings and loan industry. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles alleges that The Mortgage Depot Inc.

When Northrop sought to hire a consultant in 1983 with influential connections in the South Korean government and a shrewd understanding of international arms trading, it went to Jimmy K. Shin. Shin, known in Honolulu as a gregarious and high-stakes operator who drives a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, was put on the Northrop payroll for $102,000 per year to help sell the company's F-20 jet fighter to South Korea. But Shin, a former bar owner with a checkered past, was not the U.S.