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Jan.10, 2010

Eleven years after Florida regulators gave billionaire Allen Stanford unprecedented approval to open a rogue financial center in Miami, lawmakers are pushing to ensure it never happens again.

After months of criticism, legislators are pressing for tough provisions to force regulators to investigate financial companies like Stanford's that sold millions in sham investments from a posh downtown high rise.

The gaps in enforcement helped Stanford carry out what prosecutors are calling a $7 billion Ponzi scheme that fleeced thousands of investors.

``We need to fill this void and give it the best fix to protect the public,'' said Thomas Cardwell, recently appointed commissioner of the Office of Financial Regulation. ``It's very high on my agenda.''

The legislation would force state agents to monitor all offshore finance firms in Florida -- including foreign trust offices -- for fraud, money laundering and the destruction of key records.

The proposal comes after a Miami Herald investigation revealed sweeping breakdowns in state oversight of Stanford's Miami's office that allowed the banker to run a special trust office -- the only one of its kind -- without government monitoring.

Over the objections of the state's chief banking lawyer, Florida permitted the banker to operate without any fraud checks or money laundering requirements, in violation of state and federal law, the newspaper found.

In the ensuing years, Stanford's employees sold millions in unregistered securities from the office, secretly diverting the money to pay for personal luxuries -- including mansions, yachts and a fleet of private jets, court records state. The 59-year-old banker is now awaiting trial on charges of defrauding more than 21,500 people worldwide.

Office employees were stuffing checks from customers into pouches and sending the bags on jets to his bank headquarters in Antigua, shredding the records left behind, the newspaper found.

Though state regulators were alerted to the practices during office visits in 2001 and 2005, they never took action.

The new legislation, co-sponsored by Republicans Sen. Garrett Richter and Rep. Tom Grady, would stop regulators from letting companies like Stanford's operate outside state and federal jurisdiction.

``People place their trust in these institutions,'' said Richter, a longtime executive banker and chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Insurance. ``I think this is common sense regulation.''

The proposal would ban companies like Stanford's -- known as foreign trust representative offices -- from operating without being licensed and routinely inspected by state agents. In addition, it would require the offices submit to outside audits.

When Florida allowed Stanford to open his center on the 21st floor of the Miami Center -- adorned with marble tables, ornate artwork and mahogany walls -- it never required him to report anything to state or federal regulators.

In the first six years, the luxury offices attracted thousands of Latin American investors -- drawn to the safety of a U.S. company -- who bought more than $600 million in sham certificates of deposit, records show.