Florida Regulators Abetted Stanford In Major Fraud

By: Lucy Komisar, Micharl Sallah and Rob Barry

Source: Miami Herald

Florida’s state regulators granted Allen Stanford, the former Texas financier behind the $7 billion Ponzi Scheme and who swindled thousands of investors, huge powers that allowed his Miami operation to bypass regulators.

Stanford, who opened the Stanford Fiduciary Investor Services in 1998, was granted permission to offer Certificates of Deposits to the tune of hundreds of millions and in turn transfer the proceeds to the island of Antigua, without allowing regulators to check for fraud.

According to Richard Donelan, the State’s chief banking counsel who opposed the Stanford deal, “There was no lawful way that office should have been opened.”

Stanford’s Miami office was the first of its kind– a foreign trust office that could bypass regulators, reports the Miami Herald.

Florida aided Allen Stanford, suspect in huge swindle