“He is the best investor to come into the Caribbean, not only Antigua, but the region,” said islander Julian Exeter. Spencer said at the weekend he feared the Stanford scandal would hurt the image of the tiny Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda, which has undergone scrutiny in the past for alleged money laundering by Ukrainian and Russian Mafia bankers.īut many local islanders expressed support for the country’s biggest investor. Once described as “haughty, arrogant and obnoxious” by Antiguan Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer, Stanford, America’s 205th richest man according to Forbes magazine, has often walked a fine line between critics and admirers in a business and sporting empire that reaches well beyond Texas to Europe and across the Caribbean. Now he is out of sight, as his harassed staff in plush company offices from Memphis to Atlanta fend off queries from panicked investors and posses of probing journalists.

Only months ago, Stanford, known as “Sir Allen” in Antigua whose authorities knighted him in 2006, was providing fodder for the British tabloids by flying in by helicopter to bankroll international cricket matches in a blaze of publicity. regulations and that he would “fight with every breath to continue to uphold our good name.” He said his company was fully compliant with all U.S. federal probe as “routine” and triggered by complaints from disgruntled former employees. The SEC’s revelation that Stanford’s business empire - stretching from the Caribbean island of Antigua to Houston, Miami and Caracas - was exposed to losses from the alleged Ponzi scheme run by financier Bernard Madoff completes the picture of a finance king who somehow lost his Midas touch along the way.īefore the SEC civil charges were announced, Stanford dismissed the U.S. The SEC said they and the bank reported “improbable” high returns and gave “false” assurances to investors. Securities and Exchange Commission alleged Stanford and two fellow executives fraudulently sold $8 billion in high-yield certificates of deposit.

headquarters in Houston, federal authorities charged the flamboyant 58-year-old mustachioed financier and three of his companies with a “massive ongoing fraud.”Īccusing him of far less altruistic aspirations than those trumpeted on his website, the U.S. In a self-congratulatory posting on the Stanford Group’s website, its founder and chairman credits his grandfather with giving him “the inspiration to dream” and “an unwavering desire to build a business that is second to none.” He speaks of “a passion for service and the values that hold us together”.

Midas civil 2017 pirate