Opposing attorneys in the bank fraud trial of Ashton Ryan made opening statements to the jury Tuesday, painting two very different pictures about the defendants’ roles in the $1 billion collapse of New Orleans-based First NBC Bank.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Payne argued that Ryan and his co-defendant, Fred Beebe were part of a broad conspiracy that played out over several years, whereby loans were made to unworthy borrowers and documents were falsified to cover up that those borrowers couldn’t make payments.

“The evidence will show that the defendants, Ashton Ryan and Fred Beebe, weren’t honest and made false statements to lend money to borrowers who couldn’t pay their debts and had a special relationship to Ashton Ryan,” Payne argued.

Ryan faces 43 charges that include bank fraud, conspiracy, and creating false entries in bank records. Beebe faces seven charges on the same indictment, all of which are related to the six borrowers who have taken guilty pleas in the case.

Lawyers for Ryan and Beebe made separate opening statements. While they didn’t dispute that hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans were racked up by a small number of borrowers over the decade the bank was in existence, they argued a wholly different set of motivations for their clients’ behavior.

Ryan’s lead lawyer, Edward J. Castaing, Jr., said his client had founded First NBC Bank after Hurricane Katrina with altruistic intentions and perhaps had been too lenient with some of the bank’s borrowers.

“Every loan that Ashton Ryan made he expected and believed it to be a good loan that would be paid back with interest, fees, profits, all to the benefit of the bank,” Castaing said.

He made the loans “to the benefit of the borrowers, too, yes, maybe to a fault,” Castaing added. But it was “to help borrowers rebuild after Katrina and help them get loans they couldn’t get from the Whitneys of this world, the Cap Ones,” he said, referring to Hancock Whitney Bank and Capital One.

Castaing talked about Ryan’s background as a graduate of Jesuit High School and Tulane University, where he earned an MBA before joining the “Big Five” accounting firm Arthur Andersen. After moving into banking in the 1990s, he eventually founded First NBC in 2006 specifically to lend to those trying to recover from the devastating hurricane, Castaing said.

Ryan’s lawyer said it was important to distinguish between bad loans that his client approved and criminal fraud and conspiracy.

“The government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ashton Ryan had specific criminal intent to deceive the bank and deprive it of something of value,” Castaing said. “He must have intended to harm the bank.”

A junior executive

Beebe’s lawyer, Sara Johnson, sought to distance her client from the alleged conspiracy. Beebe was a relatively junior vice president working from a Kenner branch of the bank, she said, noting that he had not joined First NBC Bank until 2009.

The charges against Beebe relate solely to loans that were made to Warren Treme, one of the developers who was approved to borrow millions of dollars from the bank even though he was getting deeper under water and had continuously defaulted.

Johnson said that Beebe was essentially duped, and that Treme’s loans were dumped on him when he joined the bank. She said Treme’s loans had moved from First Bank of Commerce, where both Beebe and Ryan had worked, to First NBC and at first had been assigned to Brad Calloway.

Calloway is one of the three bank officials who have taken guilty pleas in the case.

“Everyone dumped their junk on the new guy,” said Johnson, which left Beebe with Treme’s bad loans, which already totaled in the millions of dollars and were above Beebe’s authority to approve or deny.

Johnson said that Beebe not only made accurate reports of Treme’s poor credit situation but eventually went out of his way to record meetings with Treme discussing his bad loans and then cooperated with federal authorities when the bank collapsed.

Witnesses to come

Payne for the prosecution also previewed witnesses to come, including Gregory St. Angelo, First NBC’s former top lawyer who also was one of its biggest borrowers.

St. Angelo owed $46 million to the bank at the time of its collapse.

Brian Gibbs, a Mississippi developer, will testify about how he continually got loans to cover the fact his projects in Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana had failed and he couldn’t make payments, Payne said.

Other witnesses include Kenneth Charity, another property developer; financial services business owner Frank J. Adolph Jr.; hotel owner Arvind “Mike” Vira; and contractor Jeffrey Dunlap. Payne said he would detail how Ryan had benefited from the cozy lending relationships through a land development deal he had with Treme that involved Dunlaps’ contractor firm.

First witnesses in the case will be called Tuesday afternoon.