Texas billionaire Allen Stanford was set to appear in a federal court in Virginia yesterday over allegations of massive fraud involving his Antigua bank, US officials said after he surrendered to the FBI.
Stanford is expected to be transferred to Houston after his initial court appearance to face criminal charges in a sealed indictment, a federal official said on condition of anonymity.
The golf and cricket promoter already faces civil charges brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that he fraudulently sold US$8 billion in certificates of deposit with improbably high interest rates from his Stanford International Bank Ltd, headquartered in Antigua.
Stanford, 59, was spending the night in a Virginia jail and was due to appear before a federal magistrate judge yesterday morning in Richmond, the federal official said.
“He surrendered,” Dick DeGuerin, Stanford’s Texas attorney, said by telephone on Thursday after speaking with his client. “He’s in FBI custody.”
The Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment on Stanford’s arrest.
Justice Department officials, including the US attorney from Houston, planned to hold a news conference yesterday in Washington to announce the criminal charges.
Stanford, who holds dual US and Antigua and Barbuda citizenship, denies any wrongdoing and has said he would put up “the fight of my life” if indicted.
“If the SEC had not come in and disemboweled a living, breathing strong organization the way they did, there’s no question on God’s green earth that everyone would have been made whole and we would have had a lot of money left over,” Stanford said in an interview in April.
In its civil case, the SEC in February accused Stanford, his college roommate and three of their companies of carrying out a “massive Ponzi scheme” over at least a decade and misappropriating at least US$1.6 billion of investors’ money.
“This starts to bring closure for the victims,” said Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC enforcement official, referring to the criminal indictment.
Stanford now faces concrete charges and “is no longer swinging at a pinata,” said Frenkel, now an attorney in Rockville, Maryland.
Before the SEC leveled the fraud charges, Stanford’s personal fortune was estimated at US$2.2 billion by Forbes magazine. He was a generous sports patron and owned homes in Antigua, St Croix, Florida and Texas.
To date, the only Stanford official to have faced criminal charges is Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer for the Stanford Financial Group. She was arrested by the FBI in February and later freed on bail.
Pendergest-Holt and James Davis, Stanford’s one-time roommate at Baylor University who served as the company’s chief financial officer, were both named in the SEC’s civil complaint.
Davis has not been charged with criminal activity and is cooperating with federal authorities, although his attorney has said he expects his client to be indicted.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS