Stanford receiver wants $600 million

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The court-appointed receiver in the $9 billion civil fraud case of investment promoter Robert Allen Stanford announced Tuesday he will seek more than $600 million from a tiny minority of Stanford’s 30,000 investors.

The announcement ignores the objection of the Securities and Exchange Commission. On Monday, SEC attorneys asked U.S. District Judge David Godbey, of Dallas, to bar the receiver, Ralph S. Janvey, from taking such action against innocent investors, many of whom lost their savings to Stanford firms.

Janvey, a Dallas attorney, said in a written statement Tuesday that he “respectfully disagrees with the SEC on this issue.”


More than 1,000 of Stanford’s investors are believed to be in the Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Covington areas. Estimates of their losses exceed $1 billion.

“How can you justify taking money back from 300 investors when thousands from around the world received interest payments over the 10- to 15-year span that this fraud was being perpetrated?” one of the investors, Debbie Dougherty, of Central, asked Tuesday.

“There is no rhyme or reason to what this man (Janvey) is attempting to do,” she said.

Dougherty earlier said she and her husband, an ExxonMobil retiree, may have lost more than $500,000 to alleged frauds involving certificates of deposit at Stanford International Bank on the Caribbean island of Antigua.

For each of the previous three years, Dougherty said, the couple withdrew $60,000 for living expenses. Now, each of them has returned to the work force. She said an additional debt of $180,000 would be devastating.

Dallas attorney John J. Little is the court-appointed examiner in the case. As such, he represents the interests of investors who lost money to Stanford. Little’s view mirrors that of Dougherty and the SEC.

Little told the judge Tuesday “there is no authority for the assertion of claims that do no more than increase the loss of investors who are already victims of the fraud.”

As receiver, Janvey is responsible for finding and seizing Stanford’s assets.

In his written statement, released by Jordan Gibennus of Houston-based Pierpont Communications, Janvey said he wants to recover funds paid to some investors so the money can be spread to all the victims.

Pierpont Communications is being paid with investor funds recovered from Stanford by the receivership, Gibennus said.

The SEC alleges that Stanford and some of his associates stole as much as $9 billion from his investors. And Stanford is under indictment in Houston for allegedly conspiring to steal at least $7 billion of that total.

Most of the losses are tied to certificates of deposit purchased from Stanford International Bank.

The receiver has stated that investors are unlikely to recover more than a fraction of their investments.

But Janvey plans to recover $600 million of the losses from investors who received returns on their money prior to February, when the SEC shut down Stanford’s operations.

“The receiver’s duty is to provide the best outcome for all investors, not just the small fraction of those who received redemptions (interest payments),” Janvey said in Tuesday’s statement.

He added that his plans “are fully supported by case law.”

SEC attorneys told Godbey on Monday that Janvey wrongly believes case law is on his side.

Cases cited by Janvey involve court-ordered retrieval of money received by investors in other fraudulent schemes, the SEC attorneys agreed. But the investors whose assets were seized in those cases were not entirely innocent participants, they added.

One of those investors was the girlfriend of a ringleader in a fraudulent scheme, noted SEC attorney David B. Reece. Others plotted to avoid court-ordered freezes on their funds, Reece explained.

Little, the examiner in the Stanford case, has objected to Janvey’s receivership bill of $20 million for work done in February, March and April.

If approved by Godbey, that bill would be paid from funds recovered on behalf of Stanford’s investors.

Little told the judge Tuesday: “One hopes the receiver would agree, for example, that it would be inappropriate, at best, to expend $2 in attorneys’ and accountants’ fees chasing a recovery of only $1. Based upon his conduct to date, it appears that he is determined to pursue precisely that sort of claim.”

In Baton Rouge, attorney Phillip W. Preis said Janvey’s plan does not appear equitable to investors in Louisiana and other states because they total no more than 20 percent of Stanford’s worldwide base of investors.

Source: http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/51365972.html?index=27&c=y

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