By: Alison Fitzgerald and Thomas Black
This article appeared on bloomberg.com, see full story
R. Allen Stanford, clad in jeans and a white polo shirt embroidered with his corporate eagle-shield logo, told employees on Antigua in 2005 that he spent “millions and millions and millions of dollars” on the island “to attract the wealthiest people in the world.”
Potential clients “have to go back literally blown away,” the Texas banker said, according to a video of the meeting provided by Howard Allen, an Antiguan filmmaker who said he was hired to shoot it. Stanford said on the tape that he was upset by opposition to his latest development plans.
The financier, 58, accused by the U.S. of running an $8 billion Ponzi scheme, built Antigua into a marketing showcase for his Stanford Financial Group by lending its government at least 230 million Eastern Caribbean dollars ($85 million) and handing checks to public officials, according to interviews and documents.
At the same time, the state sold him land at what former Prime Minister Lester Bird called cut-rate prices, appointed him to the agency regulating his offshore bank and handed him the title “Sir.”
Stanford’s island empire-building ended when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued the banker and two colleagues on Feb. 17 over sales of certificates of deposit from his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank Ltd. The U.S. stepped up enforcement after financier Bernard Madoff was arrested in December and accused of running the largest Ponzi scheme in history. He told investors their accounts held $64.8 billion, according to papers filed in Manhattan federal court.
