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May.15, 2010
CARACAS, VENEZUELA. May 15, 2010. Latin Americans, victims of the pyramidal fraud perpetrated by R. Allen Stanford, represented by the COALICION VICTIMAS DE STANFORD AMERICA LATINA, denounce the shameful role played by the US Department of Justice in its inexplicable silence on the “Stanford Case”.
Jaime R. Escalona, Leader of the Coalition asks: “Why did the competent Authorities not act, even though since 1989, Scotland Yard and the FBI had suspicions that the origins of the vertiginous growth of Stanford’s businesses were in Colombian drug money?”
In order to understand the miserable history of R. Allen Stanford and his criminal behavior, we should begin in 1985, when he was issued a banking license to operate his first bank, the International Guardian Bank in the small Caribbean Island of Montserrat, a British Overseas Territory.
As a result of a complaint presented to the Montserrat authorities by an American computer programmer hired to update the computer system of another Bank on the Island, Dick Marston from Scotland Yard was brought in to investigate R. Allen Stanford and his bank in Montserrat. This English officer conducted a joint investigation with the FBI that lasted several years. Once detailed intelligence was received which confirmed the presumption that R. Allen Stanford was laundering drug money for major Colombian drug traffickers, in May of 1991, the Montserrat authorities revoked the license that allowed the operation of his bank, the Guardian International Bank. He was not incarcerated.
Jaime R. Escalona asks: “Why was there merit enough to revoke his license to operate the Bank on the Island of Montserrat and but not to detain him or open a case against him for money laundering?”
“The same suspicions of fraud and money laundering accompanied Stanford’s businesses in the following years, to the Island of Antigua and to the United States,” explained the Leader of the COALICION VICTIMAS DE STANFORD AMERICA LATINA.
In 1999, a DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) investigation revealed that members of the Mexican drug Cartel had deposited $3.1 million dollars into Stanford’s accounts. However, instead of stopping his companies and putting him behind bars, the DEA forced him to write them a check for the same amount and made him a confidential informant.
Escalona asks: “Is it possible that because he was a DEA informant, R. Allen Stanford was spared and allowed to keep his criminal empire for more than 10 years? Why so little thought for the victims?”
As a result of the civil complaint by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) that froze the funds of the certificates of deposit (CDs) issued by the Stanford International Bank Limited, the DOJ has been looking into assets related to Stanford and his Companies, in various countries, to retain them through a “Criminal Restriction Order”, because of a presumed precedence of drug trafficking, until Stanford is sentenced beyond the year 2011.
The COALICION VICTIMAS DE STANFORD AMERICA LATINA asks: “If the DOJ retains Stanford’s assets and does not allow their liquidation, how are the Receivers and Liquidators going to distribute them to the victims?”
“It is a shameful, indignant and unacceptable act,” Escalona said of the actions of the DOJ over the last 20 years. “Is it possible that the DOJ never cared for the misfortune of the innocent depositors, and used them as part of a facade to capture drug traffickers?”
Escalona affirmed: “The honest victims of Stanford are not responsible for the use of their savings in illicit businesses. If there are doubts about the origins of some of the funds invested in CDs, is it not more just and transparent that the Receivers and Liquidators demand that the creditors show the origins of their invested funds, rather than the DOJ confiscate these insignificant found assets, which should be immediately distributed among the victims?”
Escalona concluded saying: “The US Government should assume its enormous responsibility before the victims and restitute the patrimony that was stolen from them”.