What’s Going on with R Allen Stanford? Do The Ends Justify The Means?

Unites States President Woodrow Wilson said on 26 February, 1916 “justice has nothing to do with expediency.” Well, try telling that to the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Lots has been written about R Allen Stanford, his often controversial Stanford Financial Group, his investments in cricket (which is through my following of that I was ‘introduced’ to the man), money laundering, womanising…the list goes on. Those who have been following events since early this year will find it difficult to fathom how one man can be so many things. I’ve seen lots of opinion, sometimes founded logic. On the odd occasion I’ve even read things that sound like the truth. So far however evidence has not been delivered or at least was not even in front of a Grand Jury before this guy has had every asset (read “property”)  taken, split up, spat out and now mostly lost.

The 5th Amendment of the US Constitution says, “no person shall be held for ….infamous crime….nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”. In late February the SEC accused Sir Allen Stanford of ‘massive ongoing fraud” and of running a “ponzi scheme” (read “infamous crime”) and simultaneously rid him of every asset without the rightful due process. In fact he was stripped of everything without any process involving him. To boot, other countries like Venezuela jumped on the bandwagon and nationalised his local banks taking the eventual sales proceeds. This is surely not ‘due process’ or am I missing something?

I must say on that afternoon when I first read of the storm that took Stanford I was swept away myself. Was this real? Can a Government do this? In America? What was that said by President Wilson because this move was real fast?

Nicola di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, advocate of practical politics in his work ‘The Prince’ is widely acknowledged to have originated the phrase ‘the ends justify the means’.  Basically, the theory is the greater good is served by being effective rather than fair. If he is a crook, lock him up. When accusations alone are enough to close a business down lock stock and barrel by the operators of justice we are in a different age, a different blueprint, a different view. Machiavelli proclaimed expediency as the surest way to justice. But Machiavellian principles were not those employed in the USA. The land of the free. The home of the brave. The USA I thought I knew was an open economy. A free economy. A place where you are innocent until proven guilty. A country that was safe to invest in as due process and the other fine principles of freedom, democracy and free markets reigned. Unfortunately the SEC has chosen the path of expediency and with it swept like a howling wind through the principles we all hold as fundamental and the words of President Wilson in one fell swoop. The SEC has favoured a Machiavellian approach of expediency….and that is the best case reading and assumes that their allegations are correct.