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Is Sir Allen Stanford the New Bernie Madoff?
He appears to have even caught Vice President Biden's family in his web of fraud.
It is disheartening at the beginning of a new administration, which promised a new brand of politics, to discover that the vice-presidential mansion at the Naval Observatory is for sale.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Paradigm Global Advisors, a $50 million fund of hedge funds controlled by two members of Joe Biden’s family, was marketed by companies controlled by Sir Allen Stanford since July 2007. In addition, Stanford-related companies invested $2.7 million from individual investors under the arrangement. Hunter, the son of the vice president, and Biden’s brother James control Paradigm.
This begs the obvious question: Who would hire Hunter and James Biden to manage money unless they wanted access to Senator Biden? The Bidens do not have any history of successful money management. Surely, Stanford could have found more qualified money managers. I do not raise this issue as an enemy of the Bidens. I have supported and fundraised for the senator since he first ran for president in 1988.
It appears that Sir (by way of Antigua and not the queen of England) Allen Stanford has been playing fast and loose with his investors’ money for a long time. He is the founder and sole shareholder of Stanford Group, which is located in Houston, Texas. The crown jewel of his investment empire is the Stanford International Bank in Antigua (far, far away from regulators’ prying eyes) with $8 billion in assets. Most of the investment activity of the Stanford Group involved soliciting buyers for the Antiguan bank’s certificates of deposits. These certificates typically paid twice the market rate in interest with no apparent rational explanation of how they were able to accomplish that.
I never had the pleasure of meeting Sir Allen, but I did meet with middle management of the Stanford Group. At that meeting in 2002, a red flag was raised with me immediately. The Stanford employee called the non rated Stanford International Bank debentures that they were offering certificates of deposit. Even though these debentures technically could be called certificates, it seemed to me that the company was deliberately trying to mislead investors into thinking that these were certificate of deposits insured by a government agency.
The Stanford employee did nothing to disavow me of that notion. I asked repeatedly: “These are certificates of deposit?” He said “yes.”
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Laura Goldman worked on Wall Street for 25 years for such firms as Merrill Lynch and Paine Webber. She now owns her own money management firm, LSG capital, in Tel Aviv, Israel.
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5 Comments
1. marlenestarr:it is not difficult for one to belive these daft schemes when you are offered such high returns and you get them for a while, unfortunately it
Mar 2, 2009 - 5:22 am 2. glenn:started the ball rolling with northern rock and they were quite safe as it so
happens. women empowering women pyramid selling i saw 24grand change hands
this night at a meeting and was sorley tempted to put 3grand in as it was
a close freind of mine asking me but something said no. the people will
never get their money back, its possible bin laden is behind all this he said
would ruin the world. Marlene Starr.
Interestingly, the Women Helping Women scheme that operated in my town several years ago was run largely by wives and significant others of senior law enforcment people, Many of those involved have been promoted. Nobody went to jail.
Mar 2, 2009 - 7:58 am 3. Rodger Harris:I think we should tar & feather these guys and run them out on a rail. Madoff should be dragged out of his 5th Ave. apartment and hung in the nearest square. In China he would all ready have been brought to justice – trial – then hung! Perhaps the Chinese have something!
Mar 2, 2009 - 7:30 pm 4. Nzewi uchenna osita:The money a master gave to his three servants were payments made to Dim Ohachi by alqueda to purchase from jordan wedding sucide bomb attack to repeat the african culture of cannibalism in the time of hixikiah king of isreal when it was re echoed by prophet isah about one of the servants that hide his own shekel and the most succeful one from tjhe proceed of human bein he sold sale the portion of the person that refused to invest in human trafficking and gave the commision to the second our that made interest.in The time madeba alzaqawi slaughtered a journalist before the northern king set a polish man up in afghanistan who want to translate the hoolywood film twins through other peoples money paid to Dim ohachi to give arms to the 13th cventury africans through achinese film called two snake in monkey shadow that represents King songhai as the monkey anmd the two sons of assyria king the snakes in black forest.
Mar 4, 2009 - 5:57 am 5. Paul Daniels:If the SECOND alledges Stanford stole all this money from investors, then where is all the billions being ‘unfrozen’ coming from? Unless the SECOND was wrong all along and under pressure from Stanfords competion, stole his Co. And put 3000 employees out of work. Its interesting how their rhetoric sure has backed WAY off since they have found all the money that was never missing in the first place. The feds are certainly doing a great job of destroying the free market economy. If history of Russia in 1917 is any indicator, we are all in for the great change Comrade Obama promised.
Mar 19, 2009 - 8:35 pm