R. Allen Stanford ‘s expired Antiguan passport was found among possessions seized by a court-appointed receiver for the financier’s companies, three days after prosecutors told a U.S. judge they didn’t know where it was.
“The passport is a red, diplomatic passport that expired in 2005 and was apparently retrieved a few months ago from Stanford’s home in St. Croix,” prosecutors told U.S. District Judge David Hittner yesterday in a court filing in Houston.
They said finding the missing passport doesn’t justify letting Stanford out of jail on bail. The Texas financier, accused of orchestrating a $7 billion fraud, holds U.S. and Antiguan citizenship.
Hittner, agreeing with prosecutors that Stanford was a flight risk, on June 30 reversed a federal magistrate’s order setting Stanford’s bail at $500,000. A day earlier, the government’s attorneys told the court they could account for only two of Stanford’s three passports. Stanford previously surrendered his U.S. and regular Antiguan passports.
Stanford, 59, has been in custody since June 18, when he was arrested after a Houston grand jury indicted him for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme involving certificates of deposit sold by Antigua-based Stanford International Bank Ltd.
He faces life in a prison if convicted of the most serious of 21 counts of conspiracy, fraud, obstruction and money laundering. The government said he used funds from new investors to repay old investors.
The criminal charges mirror civil fraud claims the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lodged against the financier, two associates and three of his companies in February.
Receiver’s Account
“Before July 1, Mr. Stanford’s counsel had not asked the receiver or his counsel about an expired Antiguan passport and they had no reason to think an expired Antiguan passport was of significance,” Janvey’s spokeswoman, Nancy Sims, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.
An attorney for Janvey told a Stanford lawyer on July 1 that the receiver’s investigators had found such a passport at Stanford’s St. Croix premises, Sims said.
“I discovered yesterday that the receiver/government has had the passport all along,” Dick DeGuerin, Stanford’s criminal-defense attorney, said yesterday in an e-mail. “It’s pretty clear the prosecutors were less than forthcoming about it at the crucial time, during the hearings, especially when they made such an important point of ‘the missing passport.'”
Prosecutors’ ‘Misrepresentations’
DeGuerin said he plans to ask Hittner to reopen the hearing on whether Stanford deserved bail based “on this and several other misrepresentations” made by prosecutors.
DeGuerin has told Hittner the financier won’t flee if released on bail because he wants to face and fight the charges against him.
The lawyer previously said he planned to seek reversal of Hittner’s ruling, first in a filing with the judge, then with the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans if needed.
Barring a reversal, Stanford will be held until trial, which his lawyer said could be as much as a year away.
Stanford has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing. He is also fighting to regain control of his assets, valued last year at as much as $2 billion. Janvey seized all of Stanford’s personal and corporate property after the SEC filed its lawsuit.
The criminal case is U.S. v. Stanford, H-09-342, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Houston). The civil case is SEC v. Stanford International Bank, 3:09-cv-00298-N, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas (Dallas).
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=ahJJBhWEK8bA #
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