Ownership Mystery Dogs Independence Bank : Banking: Regulators want to know if a shadowy Luxembourg bank has a secret stake in the Encino institution.

Fulvio V. Dobrich, chief executive of Independence Bank in Encino, has a simple rule for separating his responsibilities from those of Saudi financier Ghaith R. Pharaon.

“My job is to run the bank,” Dobrich said. “His job is to own the bank.”

The rule hasn’t made his life simple lately. He has had to explain to some of Independence’s biggest depositors why the Federal Reserve Board is looking into who does own Independence--Pharaon or someone else.

Specifically, the Fed wants to know if Bank of Credit & Commerce International (BCCI), a vast and shadowy Luxembourg bank that pleaded guilty in 1990 to drug-money laundering, secretly owns some of the Encino bank.

Dobrich, who has been the bank’s chief executive since 1989, simply tells depositors what Pharaon has told him: The Saudi businessman is the bank’s only owner.

The BCCI question isn’t the only one plaguing the San Fernando Valley’s biggest bank, which has $659 million in assets. In the last two years, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., concerned about Independence’s troubled real estate loan portfolio, has required Pharaon to put $17.6 million in new capital into the bank.

Despite the infusions, another sign of the severity of Independence’s problems came Monday, when the bank reported a loss of $16.9 million in the first quarter ended March 31. Its largest quarterly loss ever came in part because of a $6.2-million provision for possible loan losses and a $6.1-million writeoff of investments in real estate joint ventures.

Many of the bank’s problem assets are in its portfolio of construction loans on properties in Southern California, Dobrich said. A year ago, the bank had a profit of $1.5 million in the first quarter.

The losses come as Independence is being dogged by questions of links to BCCI. Such a tie would violate Fed rules, which require U.S. banks to disclose--and obtain agency approval of--any foreign ownership.

The question of ties to BCCI has “not been good publicity for this bank, by any stretch of the imagination,” Dobrich said. BCCI last year pleaded guilty in federal court in Florida to laundering money in a case involving Colombian drug lords.

The case of Independence is reminiscent of First American Bank, a Washington institution whose chairman is former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford. The Fed last month ordered BCCI to divest itself of any secret control it had in First American.

Clifford, a prominent figure in the capital, has said he had no idea that four wealthy Arab investors who acquired control of First American may have been fronting for BCCI.

Government investigators say BCCI was in the background as Pharaon acquired Independence for about $25 million nearly six years ago.

In September, 1985, BCCI’s London office arranged for a $5-million letter of credit--from another international bank based in Paris--to guarantee a loan to Pharaon from Bank of Boston, according to documents obtained by government investigators.

At the time, Pharaon was said to own an 18% stake in BCCI. Recent estimates of the stake have varied, but Dobrich said Pharaon sold it before buying Independence.

Dobrich said he knew nothing of the letter of credit from Banque Arabe et Internationale D’Investissement. He said, however, that part of the approximately $25 million that Pharaon paid to acquire Independence came from an $11-million loan from Bank of Boston. That loan, Dobrich said, was repaid in 1986.

In any case, Pharaon and Dobrich don’t deny that BCCI had a role in the Independence takeover.

For instance, Pharaon has said that his stock in Independence is held in a custody account at BCCI’s London office. Indeed, it was BCCI that suggested that Pharaon buy Independence in 1985, according to Dobrich.

Independence was then owned by a number of East Asian investors. BCCI’s Hong Kong office heard that the bank was for sale and passed the news to its London office, Dobrich said. Not long after taking over Independence, Pharaon named Kemal Shoaib, a former BCCI executive, as its chairman.

Dobrich maintains that Independence and BCCI rarely came into contact after the 1985 acquisition--and then only because of two construction loans that Independence made to developers who also borrowed from BCCI. The loans, which totaled about $2.5 million, have been paid back, Dobrich said.