Sir Allen Stanford On Fraud Charges

Breaking News

6:40pm UK, Tuesday February 17, 2009
Tycoon Sir Allen Stanford has been charged in connection with an alleged multi-billion dollar fraud in the US.

A Securities and Exchange Commission spokesman said they were "alleging a fraud of shocking magnitude".

The spokesman said the alleged fraud "has spread its tentacles throughout the world".

According to reports Sir Allen, two of his executives and three of his companies have been charged by the SEC.

The alleged fraud involved a multi-billion dollar investment scheme centreing on an $8bn certificates of deposit scheme.

The mogul is behind the controversial Stanford $20m cricket series.

He has pledged £100m over five years for the staging of the 20/20 for $20m series, held for the first time in Antigua in November last year.

Sir Allen was ready to bankroll an annual four-team international 20/20 tournament at Lord's, starting next summer.

He was also in negotiations with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to back a new English premier league to start in 2010.

Following the news, the England and Wales Cricket Board and the West Indies Cricket Board have "suspended negotiations with Sir Allen Stanford and his financial corporation concerning a new sponsorship deal".

http://www.kyroslaw.com/stanford-financial-group-lawsuits.html

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Sir Allen wins prestigious award

Thursday December 18 2008

by Aarati Jagdeo

Chairman of the Stanford Group of companies, Sir Allen Stanford, has been named World Finance magazine’s Man of the Year for 2008.

Sir Allen beat out other prestigious investors such as Chairman of the Virgin Group Sir Richard Branson, former CEO of Motorola Edward Zander and retail clothing market magnate, Sir Philip Green.

Sir Allen was chosen as the winner for this year for a variety of reasons including, according to the magazine, “his ability to lead the Stanford financial organisation through this current, turbulent environment unscathed and his commitment to philanthropic causes in cities around the world where Stanford conducts business.”

Multi-billion dollar fraud?? Isn't he already rich? Greedy B!!!

eddie wrote:Multi-billion dollar fraud?? Isn't he already rich? Greedy B!!!

Thats how he got rich no doubt

The secret of Sir Allen Stanford's three 'outside wives'

For a man who once appeared to have everything, it seems a curious omission.

Allen Stanford, the disgraced financier, rarely wore a wristwatch. Such was his capricious treatment of the people around him that he came to believe he didn’t need one.

When Stanford clicked his fingers, day or night, his friends, family and business lieutenants had no option but to jump.

‘Working for Stanford took over your life,’ said his former head of marketing Ron Rossi. ‘He might call you for a meeting at 3am in Caracas on a Saturday and you’d just have to be there.

‘He’d just sit there and tell you he didn’t like this and he wanted it done that way instead. There was no reasoning with him. Sometimes he’d fly into rages and throw pens and ashtrays across the office. At other times he’d be full of charm and good humour. He was very unpredictable.’

But for all his mercurial eruptions, Stanford could also distribute scarcely imaginable largesse to a far-flung empire of dependants ranging from salesmen working on weekly commissions as high as £200,000 to five children by four different women.

Mr Rossi recalls motivational meetings for sales executives. ‘They’d whip them into a frenzy by handing out huge sums of money all around the room,’ he said.

‘Stanford would announce a name – maybe someone who’d landed a £2 million deal. There and then, that person would be given a £200,000 cheque for commission. Then they’d say, “And here’s a bonus, too,” and give the person another cheque for £300,000.’

Stanford is, of course, the self-styled banking billionaire who promised to pump millions into international cricket, but who is now under investigation in his native America for money laundering and fraud on an extraordinary scale – a suspected £5.3billion.

And last week his glamorous right-hand woman, the statuesque ‘ice maiden’ Laura Pendergest-Holt, was charged with obstructing the investigations.

Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the hulking Texan’s personal life is as tangled and secretive as his business empire.

He remains married to Susan, his wife of 34 years, by whom he has a daughter, Randi, 26. But his father, James Stanford, 81, confirmed last night that his son has at least four other children by mistresses known as his ‘outside wives’.

He has been paying more than £150,000 a year to support the children according to court records and other public documents seen by The Mail on Sunday.

Mr Stanford Snr said: ‘I felt bad for Susan, him having all these outside wives and all these kids. I wouldn’t have approved of it but I heard about it after the fact.’

This lifestyle is at odds with the rather grand image Stanford Jnr has created for himself. His knighthood – a Caribbean title which he misleadingly claimed was bestowed upon him by the Queen – prompted him to affect a vaguely British accent.

He bought a moated mansion in Miami, which he called Tyecliffe Castle, and insisted he was more at home at a cricket match than at American baseball games. He sponsored the Sandhurst Cup polo competition, attended by the Prince of Wales.

He even claimed to be related to the founder of the elite Stanford University in California until it denied any relationship and then filed a trademark infringement against him for misusing its good name.

But Stanford’s pretence at old-money grandeur is nothing new. His wedding in Susan’s home town of Teague, Texas, on a hot September evening in 1975 was reported in the local newspaper as if it were a dynastic match, with the bride adorned in ‘Venice lace, lavishly appliqued on white English net’.

Teague, however, turns out to be a dusty rural town on the scorched cattle prairie of Texas and even more insignificant than nearby Mexia, where Stanford was born.

Susan’s father was a train conductor and her parents own a simple bungalow on a street where their nearest neighbour lives in a trailer.

Susan was a dental hygienist and Stanford, whose father inherited an insurance business, ran a chain of health clubs. His mother, Sammie, was a nurse.

Mr Stanford Snr lives to this day in a modest cottage. ‘Allen didn’t take after me with his lifestyle,’ he said. ‘You could compare him more, I suppose, to Sammie. When he was nine, she took off with another man and took Allen and his brother with her. She had three more husbands after me.’

By the time he made his first fortune in Texas real estate in the Eighties, Stanford was already an accomplished womaniser. ‘He met his first outside wife through the business,’ his father said.

The Mail on Sunday has established that the tycoon has a son, Reid Allen Stanford, 17, by a woman who goes by the name of Susan Stanford-Mahan.

She once worked for his health clubs and now, at 53, lives with Reid in a brick mansion on a gated estate in Frisco, a Dallas suburb.

Reached by phone, she said: ‘I am sorry, you have the wrong number.’

Another outside wife, Beki Reeves-Stanford, 54, lives on the smart Florida island of Key Biscayne. According to public records, she had a son, Robert Allen Stanford Jnr, in 1993 whose father is Robert Allen Stanford Snr.

The third outside wife is Louise Sage, from Dartford, Kent, by whom he has two children – Ross, 13, and Allena, 11. He introduced Ms Sage to his father, who said they seemed ‘close’.

The tycoon’s long-suffering wife Susan petitioned for a divorce in November 2007. The proceedings are still going on.

His father’s second wife Billie noted that the financier is now dating an American brunette, Andrea Stoelker. ‘It won’t last. She’s 30 – getting a bit old for him,’ said Billie.

Mr Rossi said that Stanford’s womanising was common knowledge in the company – as was the fact that all his women, like his employees, were financially dependent on him and subjected to his controlling manner.

‘Andrea was a cocktail waitress when Stanford met her,’ he said. ‘Now she’s got a mansion in Miami and goes around wearing a big diamond necklace. She would be at every function with Stanford, but no one was supposed to take a photograph of them together.

‘Once, I was drinking with the two of them at a party in Caracas when he told her they should have kids. She said, “Not unless you marry me.”’And he told her, “I can’t do that.” We all knew his wife was in Houston and that he never saw her.

‘I could never understand what he saw in Andrea. She may be half his age, but she’s quite ordinary. She’s nothing like Laura Pendergest-Holt, who is very attractive, about 6ft tall and has a dazzling personality.’

Stanford incorporated his first bank in the tiny British colony of Montserrat, and always claimed that he moved his business to Antigua in 1985 because of a clash with British regulators. Others, however, say he left the island after being beaten up in a row over a girlfriend.

Details of his extraordinary lifestyle funded by his income from the bank – now alleged to be a conduit for money laundering – are contained in a paternity suit filed by Louise Sage under the name ‘Louise Stanford’.

The suit, which was settled last August, outlines yachts chartered for family holidays at £70,000 a week, a fleet of private aircraft, a Lincoln limousine and driver on 24-hour call, and a house rented for Louise and the two children at £16,000 a month.

When they broke up after 12 years together, he continued to lavish money on this secret second family, spending £500,000 a year on housing, food and school fees to ensure his children maintained their ‘privileged and luxurious lifestyle’.

But the court papers also reveal that Ms Sage risked losing everything when she ‘secretly’ married American-born Michael Alfieri in August 2007.

Matters were made worse when Stanford discovered that Alfieri had ‘a criminal record...for serious offences including, but not limited to, aggravated assault with the intent to commit felony, aggravated battery, and possession of controlled substances’.

Stanford even went to the children’s school, pulled the children out of class and bombarded them and the headmaster with his opinions about Alfieri, according to Ms Sage.

Alfieri said last night that his convictions were more than a decade in the past and that Stanford was using him to attack Ms Sage.

Regulators now claim that Stanford’s apparently limitless wealth might be the product of a vast pyramid scheme.

Mr Rossi said: 'There wasn’t a person in his organisation who didn’t think something fishy was going on. I could see that it just wasn’t possible to generate returns of 12 per cent year after year. My wife is an accountant and she told me it sounded like a Ponzi scheme.

‘I sat in on meetings with clients to familiarise myself with the business and once went to see a very wealthy widow in Mayfair.

'Her lawyer had done his homework and knew more about the way the company operated than any of us did.

He ended up telling us, “If you go near my client ever again, I’ll sue you.” By that time, I’d already figured out what sort of outfit I was working for.’

Stanford’s business relied on pulling in wealthy clients. ‘Sales staff had to generate £750,000 of business every quarter. If they missed two quarters, they were put on notice. If they missed a third quarter, you wouldn’t see them again,’ said Mr Rossi.

The empire was kept afloat because, he believes, Stanford surrounded himself with highly intelligent people.

‘Only a small number of top people knew exactly how it all worked.’ he said. ‘The rest of us had our suspicions but we just got on with our jobs.

‘His top people were exceptionally bright. But Stanford was also shrewd and careful not to sign any documents that might incriminate him, which is why I believe he might walk free and some of his inner circle may be held to account for what went on.’

Mr Rossi claimed that the opulence of Stanford’s operation in Antigua should have raised suspicions.

‘We called the bank there the mausoleum,’ he said. ‘It was a huge place, set up on a hill and visible the moment you landed at the airport, set in impressive grounds with the clubhouse and restaurant nearby.

‘But only about ten people actually worked there. They were all locals and dealt with staggering amounts of money – hundreds of millions of US dollars. Most of the rooms were empty. It was all a big front, like those cardboard cut-out houses you get on the sets of Westerns.’

VIP clients – people who had invested serious money with Stanford – were flown to Antigua by private jet and given a tour of his empire. He ingratiated himself with politicians in the former British colony and was the island’s second biggest employer, hiring people for his cricket stadium, restaurants and other business ventures.

According to Mr Rossi, he also supported schools and orphanages on the island. ‘He gave them a lot of money, but he told me not to use the fact to promote his business. They’re going to suffer now. They are the people I feel most sorry for.

‘I really don’t feel any sympathy for the investors. They didn’t concern themselves with whether what Stanford was doing was legitimate or legal. They just thought, “Twelve per cent? I’ll have some of that.”’

Mr Rossi says he was sacked in 2005 after refusing to sign a document designed to provide Stanford with a defence against some of the early whistleblowers in the company. ‘After that, I knew it was only a matter of time before they caught up with him,’ he said.

‘The only surprise was that it didn’t happen sooner – and the fact that the authorities caught up with him at Andrea’s family’s home in Virginia. He had citizenship in Antigua and a fleet of private jets. He could have gone anywhere in the world. I still can’t figure out why he didn’t.’

Perhaps Allen Stanford’s undoing was that he began to believe in his own empire of lies.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1158169/Revealed-The-secret-Sir-Allen-Stanfords-outside-wives.html