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

I have not yet mounted the courage to define the actions of the SEC if they are not right. Is this possible? Unfortunately we will never know. Allen Stanford has now been indicted by a Grand Jury and faces criminal charges. These charges were laid months after his businesses were seized. During these months the SEC initiated Court appointed receiver has been spending big, fighting jurisdictional battles it never had a right to win if the USA concedes some level of sovereignty for a small country like Antigua and has had control of every document, record and other tool and resource owned by Stanford. Would you trust Machiavelli? Would you trust expediency over due process? What do you consider justice?

The SEC has decided Stanford must go. Perhaps his South American depositors, Caribbean tax haven bank and Libyan Government investment simply rubbed noses for too long. Perhaps he should have known that selling offshore deposits to mainstream Americans was not going to go down too well in the long run.

When I first starting looking into Stanford Financial last year as the name entered the world of cricket I too felt there was something of substance that was absent. I instantly thought the financials were hollow. I could not see how the money was generated. I saw a façade that seemed at best to be inch deep. I wondered how would the SEC take this guy? What will they do? Surely they can’t just take him out? Surely they will have to find actions that respect the fundamental rights we all expect and need. Deep down however I knew Stanford was on dangerous ground. In the back of my mind the thought persisted. My feeling was the SEC was a regulator. A regulator is one way defined as a device that ensures uniform speed. Stanford was moving too fast. The regulator would slow him down. But he was out of their jurisdiction. In any case, hollow financials did not naturally extend to fraud and the SEC had not taken appropriate and legal actions available to it to have discovered fraud in any legitimate way.  My goodness….they may cut him at the knees! Decapitate him! Surely this was just a nightmare…..but then Madoff came along….things got worse…..Stanford was still going fast….maybe even faster…..my thoughts became convictions. Sometimes in life the inevitable occurs to you. Stanford was dead. His whole enterprise seemed to me was living on borrowed time.

On the 17th February 2009 when the SEC filed a civil case against Allen Stanford and his Stanford Financial Group it became clear that the ideals that are the façade we hope to be our legal rights as free citizens were only skin deep. Below the surface were the organs and they were practical units. They regulated and made sure everything went at just the right speed. Regulators use methods that are advantageous to their required outcome rather than what is ‘just’.

I hope Mr Stanford is telling the truth. We all deserve it. Besides, it’s the only way everyone will get their money back now…..