Societe D Analyses Et D Etudes Bretenneau

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a French bank from the $1.2-billion civil fraud and racketeering suit against former Lincoln Savings & Loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr. and those who helped him allegedly bilk investors. U.S. District Judge Richard M. Bilby in Tucson determined that lawyers for investors in Keating's American Continental Corp. had not proved that Societe d'Analyses et d'Etudes Bretenneau shared any blame in the nation's worst S&L failure.

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a French bank from the $1.2-billion civil fraud and racketeering suit against former Lincoln Savings & Loan owner Charles H. Keating Jr. and those who helped him allegedly bilk investors. U.S. District Judge Richard M. Bilby in Tucson determined that lawyers for investors in Keating's American Continental Corp. had not proved that Societe d'Analyses et d'Etudes Bretenneau shared any blame in the nation's worst S&L failure.

The accounting firm of Touche, Ross & Co. never joined Charles H. Keating Jr. and "his merry band of thieves" in conspiring to loot Lincoln Savings & Loan, a lawyer for the accounting firm told a federal court jury Tuesday. Touche, now called Deloitte & Touche, is a "scapegoat, someone to blame," for the 1989 collapse of the Irvine thrift and its parent company, American Continental Corp., John T.