Robert B. Anderson - Private Business

Private Business

After leaving office, he was active in business, investment and banking affairs, and, during the 1960s, carried out diplomatic missions on behalf of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Anderson's career ended in personal suffering and disgrace. He was hospitalized several times for alcoholism. He illegally operated the Commercial Exchange Bank of Anguilla, British West Indies, which had an unlicensed New York branch office. The bank lost $4.4 million and several investors lost their life savings in the mid 1980s. The bank also laundered large amounts of cash for drug traffickers. In 1987, Anderson pled guilty to criminal violations of the banking laws and to tax evasion, and was sentenced to prison. The Supreme Court of New York Appellate Division, in disbarring Anderson from the practice of law, called his disbarment "a sad but we think necessary end to the legal career of one who has in times less beclouded by poor and corrupt judgment served his country in high office as Secretary of Treasury, Deputy Secretary of the Navy and as Special Ambassador to Panama during the Panama Canal negotiations."

Anderson died in New York City from throat cancer on August 14, 1989, aged 79.