Posted on 02/18/2009 2:46:08 PM PST by Zakeet
Firm PR Video Shows Owner Hugging Speaker, Being Thanked by Former President for $$
Accused con man R. Allen Stanford used corporate money to become a big man at last year's Democratic convention in Denver.
A video posted on the firm's web-site shows Stanford, now sought by U.S. Marshals, being hugged by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and praised by former President Bill Clinton for helping to finance a convention-related forum and party put on by the National Democratic Institute.
"I would like to thank the Stanford Financial Group for helping to underwrite this," Clinton said to the crowd at the event.
Stanford Financial was listed as the "lead benefactor" for the gathering, and Stanford was permitted to address the audience of several hundred.
"We had no reason to believe that a very public company that was also engaged in philanthropic work might be suspect," said a spokesperson for the National Democratic Institute, Amy Dudley.
The SEC charged yesterday that Stanford was running a fraudulent investment scheme that may have bilked customers out of as much as $8 billion.
Stanford's whereabouts are unknown and U.S. Marshals say they are searching for him.
Over the last decade, Stanford has spent more than $7 million on lobbyists and campaign contributions to Washington politics in both parties, although the vast majority of the money has gone to Democrats.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
ABC Smooze is supposed to provide more details tonight. Don't expect too much and you probably won't be too disappointed.
Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t count.
Their intentions are so noble, they deserve to wet their beaks a bit. Now get back to work. You’ve got taxes to pay.
Individual Contributions Arranged By Type, Giver, Then Recipient
Non-Federal Receipts “Exempt From Limits”
STANFORD, R. ALLEN ALLEN MR.
HOUSTON, TX 77056
INFO REQUESTED
NRCCC - NON FEDERAL #2
10/11/2002 100000.00 22992443753
Total Soft Money: 100000.00
Contributions to Political Committees
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
CHRISTIANSTED, VI 00821
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP/CHAIRMAN
MEEKS, GREGORY W
VIA FRIENDS FOR GREGORY MEEKS
07/31/2008 2300.00 28932691057
07/31/2008 2300.00 28932691058
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
HOUSTON, TX 77056
STANFORD FINANCAL GROUP/CHAIRMAN
MAFFEI, DANIEL BENJAMIN MR.
VIA FRIENDS OF DAN MAFFEI
11/02/2006 2000.00 26930624032
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
HOUSTON, TX 77056
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP/CEO
SANDLIN, MAX
VIA MAX SANDLIN FOR CONGRESS
11/05/2002 1000.00 22992931626
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
HOUSTON, TX 77056
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP/CHAIRMAN
GONZALEZ, CHARLES A.
VIA CHARLES A. GONZALEZ CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN
05/03/2002 1000.00 22991301951
NEW JERSEY DEMOCRATIC STATE COMMITTEE
08/02/2002 5000.00 23991167253
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
HOUSTON, TX 77056
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP/PRESIDEN
KPAC
06/30/2001 5000.00 21990372747
LONE STAR FUND
08/01/2001 5000.00 22990312552
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
HOUSTON, TX 77074
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP/CHAIRMAN
GONZALEZ, CHARLES A.
VIA CHARLES A. GONZALEZ CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN
02/03/2004 2000.00 24990694453
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
MIAMI, FL 33131
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER/STANFORD
PAYNE, DONALD M
VIA DON PAYNE FOR CONGRESS
11/02/2004 1000.00 24981714792
STANFORD, R. ALLEN ALLEN
HOUSTON, TX 77056
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP/PRESIDEN
RANGEL, CHARLES B
VIA RANGEL FOR CONGRESS
02/03/2008 2300.00 28990829552
STANFORD, R. ALLEN MR.
HOUSTON, TX 77056
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP CO./INVE
DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE
05/31/2003 10000.00 23991143991
STANFORD, R. ALLEN MR.
HOUSTON, TX 77056
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP/CHAIRMAN
NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE
05/21/2008 28500.00 28991322499
STANFORD, R. ALLEN MR.
HOUSTON, TX 77074
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP/CHIEF EX
NEY, ROBERT W
VIA BOB NEY FOR CONGRESS
12/07/2005 2100.00 26980048952
12/07/2005 2100.00 26980048951
Total Contributions: 71600.00
Joint Fundraising Contributions
These are contributions to committees who are raising funds to be distributed to other committees. The breakdown of these contributions to their final recipients may appear below
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
CHRISTIANSTED, VI 00820
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP/EXECUTIV
RANGEL VICTORY FUND
08/20/2008 25000.00 28932689734
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
HOUSTON, TX 77055
STANFORD FINANCIAL/CHAIRMAN
OLSON-TEXAS VICTORY COMMITTEE
05/30/2008 2300.00 28932159011
Total Joint Fundraising: 27300.00
Recipient of Joint Fundraiser Contributions
These are the Final Recipients of Joint Fundraising Contributions
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
CHRISTIANSTED, VI 00820
STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP
BOCCIERI, JOHN A
VIA BOCCIERI FOR CONGRESS
08/21/2008 2300.00 28992584627
HALVORSON, DEBORAH ‘DEBBIE’
VIA HALVORSON FOR CONGRESS
08/21/2008 2300.00 28933500756
MADIA, JIGAR ASHWIN
VIA MADIA FOR U S CONGRESS
08/06/2008 2300.00 28991950155
MAFFEI, DANIEL BENJAMIN MR.
VIA FRIENDS OF DAN MAFFEI
08/20/2008 250.00 28932691353
08/20/2008 2300.00 28932691353
MASSA, ERIC JJ
VIA MASSA FOR CONGRESS
08/20/2008 250.00 28991949763
08/20/2008 2300.00 28991949763
MCMAHON, MICHAEL E. MR.
VIA MIKE MCMAHON FOR CONGRESS
08/20/2008 250.00 28991954948
08/20/2008 2300.00 28991954948
MINNICK, WALTER C
VIA MINNICK FOR CONGRESS
08/27/2008 2300.00 28933470208
POWERS, JONATHAN
VIA POWERS FOR CONGRESS
08/20/2008 250.00 28991953384
08/20/2008 2300.00 28991953383
STENDER, LINDA MRS.
VIA LINDA STENDER FOR CONGRESS
08/20/2008 2300.00 28933529399
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
HOUSTON, TX 77046
STANFORD FINANCIAL
OLSON, PETER G
VIA OLSON FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE
05/30/2008 2300.00 29990841654
STANFORD, R. ALLEN
HOUSTON, TX 77056
STANFORD FINANCIAL
RANGEL, CHARLES B
VIA RANGEL FOR CONGRESS
08/20/2008 1000.00 28991952381
Recipient Total: 25000.00
TRY A: NEW QUERY
RETURN TO: FEC HOME PAGE
Could you imagine if he had been partying at the GOP convention with Juan McCain?
Ping the Posses!!
That link led me to an episode of Outer Limits I think.
~~DING DONG!!
Am I the only one who thinks this sounds exactly like the Norman Tsu story?! Typical Dem, do gooder with other people’s money. Even if they have to STEAL IT.
I wondered who this National Democratic Institute was. Take a gander at their Board of Directors and Board of Advisors: It’s a FLOCK OF DEM has beens! Just another way Stanford and his ilk can funnel money to the Dem Mob.
Oh, and it’s a non-profit NGO. Real non-partisan as you can see from the list. [I rearranged it slightly to bring the most familiar names to the top]
Madeleine K. Albright, Chairman
Thomas A. Daschle
Geraldine A. Ferraro
Walter F. Mondale
Harriet C. Babbitt
Bill Bradley
Emanuel Cleaver, II
Mario M. Cuomo
Christopher J. Dodd
Michael S. Dukakis
Martin Frost
Richard A. Gephardt
John Lewis
Abner J. Mikva
Charles S. Robb
Stephen J. Solarz
Theodore C. Sorensen
Esteban E. Torres
Anne Wexler
Andrew J. Young
Sam Gejdenson
Rachelle Horowitz, Vice Chair
Marc B. Nathanson, Vice Chair
Kenneth F. Melley, Secretary
Eugene Eidenberg, Treasurer
Kenneth D. Wollack, President
Douglas Ahlers
Bernard W. Aronson
J. Brian Atwood
Elizabeth Frawley Bagley
Joan Baggett Calambokidis
Patrick J. Griffin
Shirley Robinson Hall
Harold Hongju Koh
Peter Kovler
Nat LaCour
Robert G. Liberatore
Judith A. McHale
Constance J. Milstein
Molly Raiser
Nancy H. Rubin
Elaine K. Shocas
Bren Simon
Michael R. Steed
Maurice Tempelsman
Arturo Valenzuela
Chairmen Emeriti
Paul G. Kirk, Jr.
Charles T. Manatt
Senior Advisory Committee
William V. Alexander
Michael D. Barnes
John Brademas
Patricia M. Derian
Richard N. Gardner
John T. Joyce
Peter G. Kelly
Paul G. Kirk, Jr.
Elliott F. Kulick
Just more chimps going mad!
Thanks for the ping.
(no link)
Offshore bank owner learns value of `soft money’
Houston Chronicle - Wednesday, March 6, 2002
Author: DAVID IVANOVICH, Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau, Staff
WASHINGTON - Offshore bank owner R. Allen Stanford and his Houston firm were the largest contributors to a fund-raising group controlled by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle at a time when lawmakers were considering bills to clamp down on money laundering, a watchdog group reported.
Stanford, owner of the largest offshore bank on the tiny Caribbean island of Antigua, and his Stanford Financial Group had long shied away from Washington politics.
But after being forced to wrestle with the Clinton administration to protect his offshore banking business, Stanford waded into the Washington political process.
Stanford and his firm donated $448,000 in unregulated, “soft money” contributions between July 1, 2000, and June 30, 2001, according to a study by consumer activist Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen.
Republican Party committees were the largest recipients of Stanford Financial’s largesse, receiving $208,000, while a Democratic fund-raising group picked up $145,000.
The firm, and Stanford personally, contributed another $40,000 to a committee controlled by Daschle, D-S.D., who at the time was minority leader of the Senate.
(Daschle has imposed his own, voluntary limits on contributions to his soft money funding-raising group to $10,000 a year per individual or organization.)
Rep. Martin Frost, D-Dallas - the No. 3 man in the House Democratic hierarchy and leader of the Texas delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles back in 2000 - garnered $50,000, while a committee controlled by then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., received $5,000.
Stanford, a Mexia native, also donated $100,000 to President Bush’s inauguration fund and attended the big bash last year in Washington.
“Stanford was willing to spread around a lot of soft money to get what (he) wanted,” said Steve Weissman, Public Citizen’s legislative representative.
Stanford, in an interview Tuesday, said he just wanted to make sure that when lawmakers heard from the “naysayers” from the Treasury and the State departments, they would understand “the other side of the story.”
(snip)
..
Banker drawing scrutiny Houstonian’s Antigua empire raises questions
Houston Chronicle - Sunday, July 16, 2000
Author: DAVID IVANOVICH, Houston Chronicle ; Washington Bureau , Staff
R. Allen Stanford went empire-building in the Caribbean.
But the Houston businessman’s dream of creating a major offshore banking center on the tiny island of Antigua ran up against the U.S. State Department’s crusade against money laundering.
Stanford, a little-known investment banker and real estate developer in Houston, caught the State Department’s attention for his leading role in tightening Antigua’s already secretive banking laws.
Washington insisted that the changes could hamper international efforts to halt the flow of drug money. The result was a protracted confrontation between the United States and Antigua that is only now being resolved.
“It hasn’t been a smooth road,” said one State Department official. “There’s been continued resistance.”
The United States can claim victory, though. Its public rebuke has prodded Antigua to revise its banking laws again to better comply with international standards designed to stamp out money laundering, although Antigua remains on a list of countries whose laws are thought to offer a safe haven to tax evaders.
Stanford, a 50-year-old Mexia native and Baylor University alumnus, makes no apologies for his actions.
“This is not play-school,” he said in a recent interview. “This is rough and tumble business.”
(snip)
Holding dual U.S.-Antiguan citizenship, Stanford owns Antigua’s largest newspaper, heads a local commercial bank and enjoys access to Prime Minister Lester Bird.
He is the man to whom the islanders have turned to help finance construction of a hospital, build a shelter for single mothers and start up a carrier when airline service to the region was curtailed.
(snip)
The United Nations’ Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention estimates that 4,000 banks are registered in offshore locales, nearly half in the Caribbean and Latin America.
Law enforcement officials complain that because of the secrecy they offer, offshore banks are natural draws for drug dealers, tax evaders and other criminal elements. And they know money laundering is a big business.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that between $600 billion and $1.5 trillion is laundered every year.
Presented with such estimates, the Clinton administration has begun a major effort to combat money laundering.
In Antigua, an offshore account holder has long been able to hide assets from a former wife, a rival political faction, even the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
Foreign authorities can petition an Antiguan court to open bank records, but only if the suspected offense would constitute a crime in Antigua. Evading U.S. taxes is not a crime in Antigua.
Antiguan officials say confidentiality is critical. “Secrecy is the source of our success; without it there is no offshore banking,” said Lionel Hurst, Antigua’s ambassador to Washington and a member of his government’s offshore regulatory authority.
The United States’ real concern, Stanford argues, is that Antigua will emerge as a major financial center. That is not as far-fetched as it sounds.
The nearby Cayman Islands has become the world’s fifth largest banking center.
“Antigua is a very, very small player at this time,” Stanford said. “There are people who want to see Antigua remain a small player because they see our true potential. We just want our fair share of the pie.”
A real estate lure
Stanford began his offshore career on the nearby British colony of Montserrat.
The hope of finding investors for some Houston real estate ventures was what lured him to the Caribbean.
He targeted a group of oil company workers flush with severance money after the closure of two large refineries. The amiable Texan attracted substantially more than his company’s real estate projects could use.
The excess formed the basis of an offshore bank known as Guardian International Bank Ltd.
At the time, Montserrat was a booming offshore center, with scores of banks cropping up. Soon, two unrelated institutions, both of which had the word “Guardian” in their names, opened on the island.
Making matters worse, Stanford became embroiled in a dispute with the IRS over the tax treatment of assets there.
Frustrated by these troubles, Stanford moved his offshore banking operations in 1990 to St. John’s, the capital of Antigua.
Stanford’s bank - renamed Stanford International - became Antigua’s largest bank serving offshore customers.
Fewer than 1 percent of the company’s clients are Americans, Stanford said. Most hail from Latin America. Many worry about currency fluctuations, bank officials say, and choose Stanford International because they can park their assets in dollar-denominated accounts.
Some keep their assets there for fear of a change of government in their home countries, while others hope to hide their wealth from criminals who otherwise might target them for kidnapping, bank officials say.
“It’s a matter of life and death,” Stanford said.
`Small fish’ at first
Early on, Antigua’s offshore sector was of little concern at the State Department. “I would always sort of compare them with the Bahamas and the Caymans, and they were small fish,” said Jeanette Hyde, the former U.S. ambassador to the region.
Antigua’s offshore sector became more worrisome as individuals believed to have ties to Russian organized crime moved in.
In October 1997, the Antiguan-based European Union Bank collapsed, with its Russian founders suspected of absconding with $10 million in depositors’ money. In May 1998, the U.S. Customs Service accused the Caribbean American Bank of Antigua and eight individuals of bilking hundreds of investors out of $60 million.
Last fall, the Antiguan government accused Pavlo Lazarenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine, of laundering more than $80 million through an institution on the island.
As the island’s reputation began to deteriorate, Prime Minister Bird asked Stanford in 1996 to spearhead an effort to revise Antigua’s banking laws, clean up the offshore sector and expand the industry.
At Stanford’s urging, Bird named Stanford’s attorney, Carlos Loumiet, an international law and banking expert, to a special advisory board. The panel included former officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Customs.
Two other members of Loumiet’s firm, including Pat O’Brien, a former U.S. Customs special agent for South Florida, joined the effort.
Stanford was the “driving force” behind the movement, O’Brien said. Stanford Financial’s Bank of Antigua, the company’s commercial bank serving the local Antiguan population, loaned the government the money to pay for the project.
In November 1998, the Antiguan Parliament amended the country’s laws against money laundering. Some of the changes were to the liking of countries such as the United States and Britain.
Individuals, for instance, could no longer obscure their connections to offshore accounts by depositing funds in the name of an anonymous corporation. They could no longer deposit cash into offshore accounts. Banks were subject to a government examination once a year.
The new “know your customer” provisions, Stanford officials say, are more stringent than U.S. rules.
However, the new laws also promised a prison sentence to any bank employee or government regulator who released information about a bank customer without a court order.
That provision, American and British officials contended, threatened to penalize whistle-blowers trying to report illegal activity. However, Stanford says the law made provision for an employee who suspects illegal activity to report those concerns to a government entity, which would investigate the matter.
As part of the changes, the government created an agency to regulate the offshore sector, the International Financial Sector Authority.
Stanford was appointed to what was then a six-person board at the authority, even though his bank was the largest institution to be supervised by it. O’Brien and another offshore banker also were named to the board.
Stanford said his appointment to the board was “an interim step” to help get the program under way.
However, Washington cried foul.
In an attempt to head off a row with the United States, Antigua sent a delegation - led by O’Brien - to Washington. It met with Jonathan Winer, then-head of the State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. U.S. officials later complained that the delegation consisted mostly of individuals “who acknowledged they had been paid by a private-sector interest.”
Winer’s office issued a report a few weeks after the meeting, calling Antigua and Barbuda “one of the most attractive financial centers in the Caribbean for money launderers.”
Later, State Department officials were more explicit in their accusations: “Individuals suspected of involvement in money laundering and other illicit economic activities used their considerable financial influence to weaken Antigua’s anti-money laundering legislation,” the department noted in a report issued earlier this year.
The changes “undermined the ability of law enforcement to investigate and prosecute financial crimes,” the report said.
The State Department did not name the individuals it was referring to.
“That’s no reference to myself or any of the companies in our group,” Stanford said. “There are other people involved in this, not just Allen Stanford.”
As the controversy raged, Stanford’s role in Antigua became an issue of increasing interest.
“I just happen to be a major investor in a small place,” he said.
Charles Intriago, publisher of the Miami newsletter Money Laundering Alert, said Winer and other State Department officials “seemed to go out of their way to highlight the role Stanford plays on that island.”
“People seem to have - like Winer - an obsessive interest in this guy and come up empty-handed,” Intriago said.
Winer, who has since left the State Department for private practice, would say only: “There’s an old lawyer’s adage: If the law’s with you, argue the law. If the facts are with you, argue the facts. If neither the law nor the facts are with you, attack a person.”
As Stanford ally O’Brien sees it, Stanford and the State Department were bound to clash in Antigua.
“The State Department likes to be able to influence other countries,” he said. “They don’t like it when private individuals wield more influence than they do.”
Regulators moved in
While the United States and Antigua were wrangling over the legal changes, the country’s new regulatory authority began cracking down on the offshore sector.
The Financial Sector Authority was empowered to close institutions that were short of capital, had not been properly audited, or that were engaged in fraud or money laundering.
The authority shuttered dozens of institutions, paring the number of offshore banks operating in Antigua from 57 down to 18.
The Financial Sector Authority’s regulatory powers were not universally recognized, even on Antigua.
An Antiguan government official, Althea Crick, refused to turn over the country’s records on the offshore banks to the authority. Eventually, the agency seized the documents after a two-day standoff.
Stanford, meanwhile, was dealing with a money laundering problem at his own bank.
Stanford learned his institution had $3.1 million in cocaine proceeds from a Mexican drug cartel on deposit. The money had come to Stanford Financial, he said, when a financial consultant from another securities firm came to work for Stanford, bringing with him $80 million to $90 million worth of business.
“Stanford was not pointedly seeking to do business with people of suspect character,” said one federal official.
Despite some reluctance in St. John’s, Stanford risked the threat of reprisal by drug traffickers and personally handed over the money to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
“That was the first time we had a successful seizure and share of drug assets in Antigua,” said David Tinsley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Miami office. “He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do.”
Six weeks later, the U.S. Treasury issued an extraordinary advisory, warning banks to take extra precautions when handling transactions routed through Antigua.
In a letter to Bird, James Johnson, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary of enforcement, complained that Antigua had compromised its laws against money laundering and created a conflict of interest by allowing Stanford and other banking officials to sit on the regulatory board.
Johnson noted that the Financial Sector Authority’s seizure of the bank documents “raises substantial questions as to Antigua and Barbuda’s commitment to provide effective supervision of its offshore sector.”
Within days, British and French officials voiced similar concerns.
“This public rebuke had a profound effect on Antigua,” U.S. Treasury adviser William Wechsler told lawmakers on Capitol Hill last month.
Stanford and other officials associated with the offshore banking sector have stepped down from the Financial Sector Authority. The Antiguan government has amended most of the offending regulations - Stanford describes it as a “tweak here and tweak there.” And Antigua has agreed to separate its promotional campaign for the offshore sector from the bank regulatory arm.
In April, Antigua became the first of 37 offshore centers around the world to adopt United Nations-proposed standards to combat money laundering.
The State Department, in a recent report, lauded the changes, saying Antigua “is now committed to creating a regulatory and anti-money laundering regime which meets international standards.”
Last month, a special task force created by the industrialized nations rated 29 countries’ and territories’ cooperation in the fight against money laundering.
The report placed 15 jurisdictions, including Israel, Russia and the Bahamas, on an international black list. Last week, Treasury issued advisories against those countries.
Antigua, in contrast, was praised for having achieved impressive results.
Antigua, however, is still getting unfavorable notices. In June, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published a list of tax havens - countries whose regulations were deemed designed to help people avoid paying taxes in their home countries. Antigua was on that list.
To address that issue, Antiguan officials are considering allowing U.S. investigators to examine bank records in criminal tax evasion cases, a concession other offshore centers have rejected.
After all the progress, Antiguan officials anxiously are awaiting word that the Treasury advisory has been lifted. An announcement is expected soon.
After nearly two years, the political standoff is finally winding down.
U.S. officials continue to monitor events in Antigua, while Stanford is busy launching his next venture, an Antiguan-based airline christened Caribbean Star Airlines, which he hopes to have flying by early August.
Stanford says he doesn’t regret the many months of diplomatic haggling and criticism that has come from wrestling with the State Department.
“It was a business decision that’s going to pay off tremendously for the Stanford Group of companies and, most importantly, the country of Antigua.”
...
Laundry list
An international task force established by the world’s industrial powers evaluated 29 jurisdictions to determine whether they were cooperating in the fight against money laundering. The report, issued last month, identified 15 territories as having “serious, systemic problems.” They were:
Bahamas
Cayman Islands
Cook Islands
Dominica
Israel
Lebanon
Liechtenstein
Marshall Islands
Nauru
Niue
Panama
Philippines
Russia
St. Kitts and Nevis
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Another 14 territories were deemed to be cooperating with international efforts. They were:
Antigua and Barbuda
Belize
Bermuda
British Virgin Islands
Cyprus
Gibraltar
Guernsey
Isle of Man
Jersey
Malta
Mauritius
Monaco
Samoa
St. Lucia
They’re all criminal scum.
Sorry, no link found for above post.
Wonder if this guy got an acid scrub-down or just had his head mounted on a stick.... either way...he is not coming to the next family reunion.
Must read thread. Lots of good information from Maggie...Any connection to the Mexican drug Cartels?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/daily/oct99/banker11.htm
Texas Banker at Center of Reform Controversy
By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 11, 1999; Page A22
ST. JOHN’S, Antigua – It is hard to escape the presence of Texas banker R. Allen Stanford on this island.
His Stanford International Bank, the largest offshore bank here, is one of the first things one sees on arrival at the airport, along with nearby building projects he is sponsoring. A new indoor basketball stadium is being built with a sign saying it is a gift from Stanford to the people of Antigua. He owns the Sun, the nation’s largest newspaper and is financing a modern hospital.
“Allen Stanford has done a lot of good for us,” said Lionel A. Hurst, Antigua’s ambassador to the United States.
But this year, the real estate developer from Houston has found himself at the center of a controversy over efforts to reform this island’s offshore banking sector.
It started when the United States two years ago began pressuring Antigua to tighten regulation of its offshore financial industry. Prime Minister Lester Bird asked Stanford, a personal friend, to undertake the task.
Stanford, 49, accepted and even agreed to pay for the services of a group of U.S. experts to help rewrite laws and create a board, with himself as the president, to oversee the changes.
Over 18 months, new laws to control money laundering were passed. One prohibited cash deposits in offshore banks, and another increased the minimum amount of capital needed to open a bank from $1 million to $5 million. Five of the nation’s 54 offshore banks were shut and another 20 are under review, including several Russian banks that had attracted international scrutiny. “Know your customer” laws were strengthened. The International Financial Sector Authority (IFSA) was created to oversee offshore activities.
“I have no doubt we have the best anti-money-laundering laws in the world,” said Patrick O’Brien, a former Customs agent recruited by Stanford to write the laws. “We have things in there even the United States doesn’t have.”
(snip)
Chicago has to be connect here somewhere?????
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