Hundreds of people rushed on Wednesday to withdraw money from banks in Antigua and Venezuela linked to Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, as the fallout from U.S. fraud charges against him rippled from the United States to the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe.
Stanford, a flamboyant 58-year-old financier and sports entrepreneur, remained out of sight a day after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged him and two top executives with an $8 billion fraud.
The SEC said it did not know where he was.
From the tiny Caribbean island of Antigua, a key outpost in Stanford’s business empire, to Andean nations Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, investors and depositors — most angry, some in tears — besieged his banks and companies to try to redeem funds or seek information about their savings.
After the shock generated by the alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme fraud by Wall Street veteran Bernard Madoff, regulators sought to calm public fears about another major financial scandal at a time of global recession and banking failures.
In Colombia, a local affiliate of Stanford halted its activities on that country’s stock exchange.
In neighboring Ecuador, the local Stanford affiliate was suspended for 30 days from operating in the Quito stock exchange, the bourse said.
While mystery surrounded Stanford’s whereabouts, CNBC television reported that he tried to hire a private jet to fly from Houston, the site of his U.S. headquarters, to Antigua, but the jet lessor refused to accept his credit card.
In a civil complaint, the SEC accused Stanford of fraudulently selling high-yield certificates of deposit from his Antiguan affiliate, Stanford International Bank Ltd (SIB).
Asked by reporters whether there would be more fraud cases of the scale and scope of Madoff and Stanford, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters: “It’s hard to say. I’d like to think that those are going to be the largest.”
He declined to comment on why the Justice Department has not filed criminal charges against Stanford.
Asked if Stanford may be outside the United States, SEC spokeswoman Kimberly Garber said: “Certainly that’s a possibility, but we don’t know.”
ANGER AND TEARS
In the twin-island Caribbean state of Antigua and Barbuda, where Stanford is the biggest private employer, Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said the SEC charges could have “catastrophic” consequences, but urged the public not to panic.
In Antigua’s capital St. John’s and the Venezuelan capital Caracas, hundreds besieged Stanford banks and offices.
“I heard the news and came straight down. We’ve had money here for two years and I want it back,” said Caracas resident Josefina Moreno, who added her son had about $10,000 invested.
A Venezuelan official estimated that people in that country have invested about $2.5 billion in SIB.
Antiguan police officers stood watch at Stanford-controlled Bank of Antigua were hundreds turned out on Wednesday.
“I’d like to get my money out,” said Andrea Lamar, 28.
Bank of Antigua, with three branches in Antigua and Barbuda, is part of Stanford’s global business interests, but separate from SIB, the offshore affiliate at the heart of fraud charges lodged by U.S. regulators.
In Mexico City, some 40 mainly middle-aged and elderly people waited outside a Stanford office for information. Tempers frayed. “I demand to be let in,” one woman shouted.
“I am really worried because all my capital is in this bank and I don’t know what I am going to do. They won’t receive us, they are locked inside, they don’t want to talk to us,” said Karyna Kleinckwort, a widow in her mid-thirties.
In an interview, another woman cried over the phone, saying her accounts were frozen.
Peruvian regulators sent an inspection team to local Stanford offices.
In its civil complaint, the SEC said SIB sold $8 billion in CDs by promising returns “that exceed those available through true certificates of deposits offered by traditional banks.”
Stanford Group claims to oversee $50 billion in assets.
In Houston, the first of what lawyers think may be a flood of lawsuits against Stanford was filed in federal court on Tuesday, hours after a U.S. judge froze the company’s assets.
Four investors who each put in between $250,000 and $600,000 with Stanford will seek “consequential damages” in a trial where they will lay out how the company’s army of financial advisers managed to sell $6.7 billion in CDs.
In Florida, Michael A. Gross, acting director of the division of securities at the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, said the office still had “an open examination” of Stanford’s business in the state, conducted through a trust office in Miami and broker-dealers in Miami, Longboat Key, Boca Raton and Vero Beach.
FIGURES, COMPANIES DISTANCE THEMSELVES
The SEC said Stanford had failed to respond to subpoenas seeking testimony.
Since Tuesday, Stanford company officials have been referring requests for comment to the SEC.
There were no signs of imminent criminal charges against Stanford, whose personal fortune was estimated by Forbes Magazine last year at $2.2 billion.
A federal judge appointed a receiver on Tuesday “to take possession and control of defendants’ assets for the protection of defendants’ victims.”
Stanford, who holds dual U.S.-Antiguan citizenship, has donated millions of dollars to U.S. politicians and secured endorsements from sports stars, including golfer Vijay Singh and soccer player Michael Owen.
On Wednesday, public figures scrambled to pull back from any ties with Stanford, who was a generous sports patron.
British brokerage and investment house Blue Oak Capital said it had canceled a deal to distribute research from Stanford Washington Research Group.
Former Swiss President Adolf Ogi said he would resign from the board of Stanford Financial Group.
A leading figure in British cricket described the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) association with Stanford as a “fiasco.
A planned Stanford-sponsored Twenty20 international cricket tournament was now unlikely to take place, following the SEC fraud charges, ECB chairman Giles Clarke said.
In Antigua, Stanford owns the country’s largest newspaper, heads a local commercial bank, and is the first American to receive a knighthood from its government. He has homes sprinkled across the region, from Antigua to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands to Miami.
Source: 540wfla.com
