description
Press Association via AP Images

An October 2008 file photo of Sir Allen Stanford at Stanford Cricket Ground, Coolidge, Antigua.

Cricket booster and billionaire R. Allen Stanford, 59, was indicted today after turning himself into authorities last night in Virginia. Stanford, chairman of the Houston-based Stanford Financial Group, is accused of running what was essentially a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.

The indictment comes after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Stanford in February for alleged investor fraud. Stanford has protested his innocence.

Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the criminal division at the Justice Department, the lead speaker at a news conference, said the following:

The indictment alleges that Stanford and his co-defendants engaged in a scheme to defraud investors who purchased approximately $7 billion in certificates of deposit, CDs, administered by Stanford International Bank Limited, an offshore bank controlled by Stanford and located in the island of Antigua.

According to the indictment, Stanford and his co-defendants allegedly misused and misappropriated most of those investment assets, including diverting at least $1.6 billion into undisclosed personal loans to Stanford himself. All the while, Stanford and his co-conspirators allegedly misrepresented to investors the financial condition of Stanford International Bank, its investment strategy and the extent of regulatory oversight by the Antiguan authorities.

 

Among the charges in the indictment unsealed in Houston, according to the Justice Department, was this one related to Stanford International Bank Ltd:

That the defendants allegedly falsely claimed that SIBL's assets grew from approximately $1.2 billion in 2001 to approximately $8.5 billion in December of 2008. The indictment alleges that, in fact, approximately $5 billion of SIBL's reported assets consisted of notes on loans to Stanford and grossly overstated interests in "island properties," including more than $2 billion added to the books in 2008 from an allegedly artificial real estate deal that Stanford and his co-conspirators conceived to inflate the bank's reported assets...

The other Stanford Financial Group officials charged with Stanford were Laura Pendergest-Holt, 35, SFG's chief investment officer; Gilberto Lopez, 66, SFG's chief accounting officer; Mark Kuhrt, 37, SFG's global controller; and Leroy King, 63, the former administrator and CEO of Antigua's Financial Services Regulatory Commission.