ST. JOHN’S, Antigua-THE Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ended an exhaustive search yesterday in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where they located 58-year-old billionaire investor Robert Allen Stanford and served him with a federal complaint of $8 billion in fraud.
FBI officials had undertaken the search at the request of the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) after that entity charged Stanford and two of his executives on Tuesday (Feb. 17) with the sale of certificates of deposit (CD) under false pretenses.
Richard Kolko, a spokesperson for the FBI, was scant with details surrounding Stanford’s apprehension, merely saying that Stanford had been served the complaint and was not arrested because the case would be a matter for the civil court.
Following raids on Stanford Group offices in Houston, Miami and other major US cities by the SEC, Stanford seemed in no hurry to speak to the authorities looking for him.
Wednesday (Feb. 18) it was reported that he attempted to charter a private jet out of Houston to fly to Antigua, but the air carrier refused his credit card, insisting upon a wire transfer of the funds instead.
Stanford’s accounts were frozen by the SEC after it issued a 25-page report stating that he and his associates bilked customers out of $8 billion by selling CDs “promising high return rates that exceed those available through true certificates of deposits offered by traditional banks”.
Beyond the illegal sale of CDs, the SEC filed numerous other areas of suspicion including 90% of the Antigua-based Stanford International Bank’s investment portfolio being “shielded from independent oversight”, Stanford falsely telling clients they could not withdraw their CDs because the SEC investigation had frozen their accounts and using “false information to promote a mutual fund wrap program separate from the CDs” to yield “improbable” profits.
Furthermore, ABC News reported that Stanford is currently under investigation by the FBI for money laundering links to “Mexico’s notorious Gulf Cartel” after suspicious checks with possible links to the crime syndicate were recovered from one of his aircraft.
Governments and financial institutions around the world were deeply shaken by the Stanford scandal with Britain, Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru all taking action or investigating their locally operated Stanford branches.
Antigua has been perhaps one of the hardest hit countries, with as much as 5% of the country’s workforce employed at the Stanford International Bank, Bank of Antigua, various cricket operations and The Sun Printing and Publishing Ltd among others.
Since the charges were first brought against Stanford, queues outside of the Bank of Antigua stretched into the hundreds as customers demanded to withdraw their funds under the watchful eye of increased security.
Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Hon. Baldwin Spencer called for calm shortly after Stanford was charged, urging the public to be careful in withdrawing their funds from banks because it could hurt the overall banking system of the country.
“This is not a looming crisis. The fallout threatens catastrophic and immediate consequences. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank is in touch with the Bank of Antigua and the government and is currently putting in place a contingency plan. Therefore, there is no need for panic,” he sa
