| Allen Stanford | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 24, 1950 Mexia, Texas, U.S. |
| Nationality | American/Antiguan |
| Citizenship | United States, Antigua and Barbuda |
| Education | Baylor University (1974) |
| Occupation | Chairman, Stanford Financial Group |
| Net worth | ▼US$2.2 billion (2008) [1] |
| Known for | Businessman in the financial services sector, Alleged Ponzi scheme, Involvement in Stanford Super Series |
| Religion | Protestantism |
| Spouse(s) | Susan Stanford (separated) |
| Children | Allen Stanford has six children (oldest to youngest). Female- Randi Susan, Roberta Allena, Rebecca Alexandra. Male- Reid Allen, Robert Allen Jr., Ross Allen. |
| Website stanfordfinancial.com, stanfordgroup.com |
|
Robert Allen Stanford (born March 24, 1950) is a prominent financier, philanthropist,[2][3] and sponsor of professional sports who has been charged with fraud.[4][5] Stanford is the chairman of the privately held, wholly owned Stanford Financial Group of Companies. A fifth-generation Texan who resides in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, he holds dual citizenship, being a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda and a United States citizen. Stanford was the first American to be knighted by that Commonwealth nation[6] and was presented with the honor by the then Governor-General of Antigua and Barbuda, Sir James Carlisle.
In early 2009, Stanford became the subject of several fraud investigations, and on February 17, 2009, was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud and multiple violations of U.S. securities laws for alleged "massive ongoing fraud" involving $8 billion in certificates of deposits.[4][5] The FBI raided three of Stanford's offices in Houston, Memphis, and Tupelo, Mississippi.[7] On February 27, 2009, the SEC amended its complaint to describe the alleged fraud as a "massive Ponzi scheme".[8] He was arrested by the FBI on June 18, 2009.[9][10]
Contents |
Stanford grew up in Mexia, Texas. His father, James Stanford, is former mayor of Mexia and a member of the Board of Directors of Stanford Financial Group. His mother, Sammie, is a nurse. After his parents divorced in 1959, Stanford and his brother went to live with their mother. Both of his parents remarried.[11][12]
James' father, Lodis Stanford, began as a barber and became an insurance salesman. In order to provide credibility to his company, Allen Stanford falsely stated that his grandfather started Stanford Financial Group in 1932.[13][14] Stanford Financial’s clients were affluent investors, institutions, and emerging growth companies throughout the world. Assets under management or advisement were in excess of US$8 billion.[citation needed]
Stanford graduated from Eastern Hills High School in Fort Worth, Texas.[12][14] In 1974, Stanford graduated from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in finance.[15][16]
A February 2009 Houston Chronicle article described Stanford as "the leading benefactor, promoter, employer and public persona" of Antigua and Barbuda. Knighted by the country in 2006, Stanford uses the title "Sir Allen." Antiguans also generally refer to Stanford using the title.[17] In October 2009 the National Honors Committee of Antigua and Barbuda voted unanimously to strip Stanford of his knighthood, and informed the prime minister of this decision on October 26. For the decision to take effect, the prime minister must forward it for action to the Governor General who will then ratify it.[18] On Monday November 2, 2009 said recommendation was forwarded to the Governor General.
Stanford has fathered six children from four different women. He has a daughter from his wife, Susan, named Randi. He has kept three other mistresses over the years and has referred to them as his "outside wives" according to Stanford's father James Stanford. Stanford has a son, Reid Allen Stanford by a woman who goes by the name of Susan Stanford-Mahan, who lives in Dallas. He has another daughter, Rebecca Alexandra Stanford (1991), and a son, Robert Allen Stanford, Jr. in 1993 with another mistress, Beki Reeves-Stanford, who lives on the Florida island of Key Biscayne. Stanford also has two other children from another mistress, Louise Sage, from Dartford, England, by whom he has two children, Ross Stanford and Allena Stanford. His wife filed for divorce in 2007, but it has not settled.[19][20]
In November 2008, Stanford denied rumors that he had fired his girlfriend, Andrea Stoelker, the president of Antigua's 2008 Stanford Super Series tournament board of directors, reportedly after she had a liaison with Chris Gayle, the captain of the Stanford Superstars: "These rumors are complete horse manure. We've been together seven years and we're happier than ever."[21] Stoelker had also been the manager of The Pavilion, a 5-star restaurant in Antigua owned by Stanford.[22]
In April 2009, after an exclusive tour, Reuters reported that Stanford's office at the Houston headquarters of the Stanford Financial Group were adorned with a personal bathroom with a private exit, together with a sizeable bar in his massive office. Journalist Chris Baltimore summed it up as "a mass of marble and mahogany that once boasted a five-star dining room, movie theater, professional kitchen and wine bar. [...] Every part of the building is grandiose, which speaks to the larger-than-life image Stanford created as a jet-setting financier, sports promoter and philanthropist."[23]
Looking around the office, Baltimore found it "easy to just gawk because of the grandeur of the place":
Among several framed certificates hung on a wall is one with the gold seal of Antigua and Barbuda pronouncing Stanford Knight Commander, which allowed him to use the title Sir Allen Stanford, and a letter on White House stationery dated Jan. 25 2006, signed by then-President George W. Bush.
Then on to the bathroom -- a chamber of black granite and mahogany, with a gigantic mirror and granite countertop, flanked with shelves of fluffy white towels and toiletries, including a bottle of "Brilliant Brunette" shampoo.[24]
Stanford started in business in Waco, where he opened a bodybuilding gym, but it failed.[25] His first success in business was in Houston real estate from the Texas oil bubble burst in the early 1980s.[26] His partner in the real estate venture was his father James. In the 1980s, Stanford and his father made a fortune buying up depressed Houston real estate and selling it years later as the market recovered. When his father retired in 1993, Stanford took control of a company of 500 employees.[21]
Stanford moved to the Caribbean in the 1980s, first to Montserrat and then to Antigua.[21] With the Stanford Finance, he started a bank on the island of Montserrat in 1985, Guardian International Bank, which he moved to Antigua during a British crackdown on Montserrat's offshore-banking industry in 1980s and renamed Stanford International Bank, an affiliate of Stanford Financial.[16]
In early 2007, Stanford and Baldwin Spencer, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda and a former Stanford ally, began verbally feuding in public.[27]
In 2009, Antigua's Financial Services Regulatory Commission has named a British firm, Vantis Business Recovery Services, as a receiver of Stanford International Bank and Stanford Trust Company, the Associated Press reported.
Reports surfaced in early February 2009 that the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a major U.S. private-sector oversight body, were investigating Stanford's company Stanford Financial Group,[28] questioning the means by which Stanford International Bank manages consistently to make higher-than-market returns to its depositors.[29] A former executive told SEC officials that Stanford presented hypothetical investment results as actual historical data in sales pitches to clients.[30] Stanford claimed his CDs were as safe as, or safer than, US government-insured accounts.[31]
Federal agents raided the offices of Stanford Financial on February 17, 2009,[32] and treated it as "a kind of crime scene—cautioning people not to leave fingerprints."[24]
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Allen Stanford with "massive ongoing fraud" centered on an eight-billion-dollar investment scheme.[4][33] Stanford's assets, along with those of his companies, were frozen and placed into receivership by a U.S. federal judge,[34] who also ordered Stanford to surrender his passport.[35]
CNBC later reported that Stanford tried to flee the country on the same day as the raids on his headquarters: he contacted a private jet owner and attempted to pay for a flight to Antigua with a credit card, but was refused because the company would accept only a wire transfer.[36]
FBI agents, acting at the request of the SEC, on February 19 located Stanford at his girlfriend's house near Fredericksburg, Virginia, and served him with civil legal papers filed by the SEC.[37] Stanford was not arrested until June 18, 2009.[38] Stanford has surrendered his passport to federal prosecutors, and he has hired the prominent criminal defence lawyer Brendan Sullivan, who represented Oliver North.[39] The SEC often files civil charges before criminal charges are filed.[40]
Following the allegations, various governments have taken over Stanford's business operations. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) announced that it has taken over the local operations of the Bank of Antigua (BOA) which will be renamed the Eastern Caribbean Amalgamated Bank (ECAB).[41] The Venezuelan Government also took over local operations of Stanford's bank in that nation.[42][43]
On February 27, the SEC said that Stanford and his accomplices operated a "massive Ponzi scheme", misappropriated billions of investors' money and falsified the Stanford International Bank's records to hide their fraud. "Stanford International Bank's financial statements, including its investment income, are fictional," the SEC said.[8][44]
In an interview on April 20 at the law offices of Houston criminal attorney Dick DeGuerin, however, Stanford denied any wrongdoing. His companies had been well-run, he claimed, until the SEC "disembowelled" them.[24]
On June 18, 2009, Stanford was taken into custody by FBI agents.[45] According to DeGuerin:
Federal agents in black SUVs surrounded his girlfriend's house this afternoon, and just sat there. I told him to walk out and introduce himself. So he did, and he asked them, 'If you've got a warrant, take me into custody. If you don't, I'm going to Houston.' And they did, so they arrested him.[9]
On June 25, 2009, Stanford appeared in a Houston court and pleaded "not guilty" to charges of fraud, conspiracy and obstruction.[46] His lawyer claimed that he, Stanford, had resorted to liberal alcohol intake to grapple with the strain of the proceedings.
On August 27, 2009, Stanford was admitted into the Conroe, Texas Regional Medical Center. He was being transported from the private prison in Huntsville, Texas to the Federal Courthouse in Houston to attend a hearing concerning his attorney, who has asked the court to be dismissed from Stanford's case. In route, Stanford complained of a racing heart.[47]
On September 26, 2009 it was reported Stanford had been hospitalized due to injuries sustained in a fight with another inmate at the private Joe Corley Detention Facility. His injuries were described as non-life threatening.[48]
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, affirming much of a United States Tax Court’s ruling on a dispute emanating from Stanford’s days of running the bank in Montserrat. In short, the court found that Stanford and his wife, Susan, under reported their 1990 federal taxes by $423,531.36.[49] Public records show Stanford owes hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes. There are four federal tax liens from 2007 and 2008 against Stanford totaling more than $212 million.[50]
The FBI and other agencies have been conducting an ongoing investigation of Stanford since 2008 for possible involvement in money laundering for Mexico's Gulf Cartel.[51]
In 2001, Stanford said publicly that his great-great-great grandfather was a relative of Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University.[52] He funded the restoration of Leland Stanford's mansion in Sacramento, California in an effort "to help preserve an important piece of Stanford family history," and hired his own genealogists to prove he was a member of the Leland Stanford family.[26] However, Stanford University denied there was "any genealogical relationship between Allen Stanford and Leland Stanford,"[26] and in 2008 filed a trademark infringement suit against Stanford claiming the school’s name was being used “in a way that creates public confusion” and is “injurious.”[52]
Stanford created and funded the Stanford 20/20 Cricket tournament in the West Indies, for which he built his own ground in Antigua. The first Stanford 20/20 Cricket Tournament was held in July and August 2006. The second tournament took place in January and February 2008 with a global television audience of 300 million.[53] Trinidad and Tobago took first place in this tournament. This team also took home the US280k Super Series prize after defeating Middlesex on 27 October 2008.[54]
In June 2008, Stanford and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) signed a deal for five Twenty20 internationals between England and a West Indies all-star XI with a total prize fund of £12.270m (US $20 million) to be awarded to the team that wins the Championship. It was the largest prize ever offered to a team for a single tournament.[55] This was in jeopardy after a row with Digicel, the sponsors of the West Indies cricket team, who were unhappy about sponsorship of the event. Eventually, the dispute was sorted out and the first Championship was won by Stanford Superstars, who defeated the England team by 10 wickets, humiliating them in the Twenty 20 arena.[56]
On February 17, 2009, when news of the fraud investigation became public, the ECB and WICB withdrew from talks with Stanford on sponsorship.[57][58] On February 20 the ECB announced it has severed its ties with Stanford and cancelled all contracts with him.[59]
The Stanford Financial Group's website said, as of mid-February 2009, that "Sir Allen supports charitable, cultural, educational, social and sporting events and organizations throughout the world". Stanford wrote in the 2008 edition of the Stanford Eagle, a glossy company magazine, that "St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has been Stanford's corporate charity of choice for three years, and our partnership has raised over $15 million for the hospital during that time."[60] On February 19, 2009, a spokesman for the hospital said that it had received only $8 million, during 2007 and 2008.[61]
In 2005, Stanford was named one of the founding members of the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business Circle of Honor [62] and spoke about leadership and ethics at the college's undergraduate commencement.[63] Stanford Financial Group endowed the college's Distinguished Leadership Speaker Series [64] and its video wall. At one point, Stanford was negotiating with the university to endow a building and leadership center.
   | Stanford Group Website - Stanford Financial Receivership | Customer Accounts |
| | Stanford 20/20 Site - Stanford 20/20 - Tournament |
| | Caribbean Sun Airlines - www.flycsa.com |
| | The World's Billionaires: #239 R Allen Stanford - #239 R Allen Stanford - Forbes.com |
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
