Liquidators Battle over Access to Stanford Assets

Details

Latest

Wednesday, 01 August 2012 02:30

By caribarena news

Antigua St. John's - Antigua & Barbuda Joint Liquidators Marcus Wide and Hugh Dickson, representing Grant Thornton, have failed in a bid to get their hands on a portion of the assets belonging to convicted Ponzi-schemer R. Allen Stanford.

According to reports U.S. court-appointed receiver Ralph Janvey may keep control of the process to collect and distribute the Stanford assets, following a court ruling in Dallas Texas on Tuesday.

A Reuters report on Tuesday quotes United States District Judge David Godbey as ruling that it is "manifestly clear" that the US was the "nerve center" of Stanford's estimated $7 billion fraud, which centered on bogus certificates of deposits issued by his Antigua based Stanford International Bank Limited (SIBL).

The judge said that despite the fact that the bank was based in Antigua, most of the day-to-day operations, and most of the victims, were elsewhere.

Spokesperson for the Stanford Victims in Antigua Kate Freeman said this argument about where to locate the center of the SIBL operations has been going on for ages. US authorities have long claimed that the fraud was centered in America, while the Antigua & Barbuda liquidators insist that the heart of the scheme was to be found here.

“The assets in America and those on the island seem like a lot of money but it only comes down to a couple hundred million, and when that gets distributed to all the victims it wont amount to a lot,” Freeman said.

She suggested that most of the money that is going to come back would come through lawsuits, and in this vein liquidators Wide and Dickson have recently filed a lawsuit against Toronto Dominion bank in Canada.

 “They are going after the correspondent banks for Stanford. That's the new route they are going,” Freeman said.

She adds that regardless of what the court rules over the center of Stanford operations, whatever the receiver in America gets will be shared out to all victims.

“It is just that from the victims’ point of view we are going to end up with more if it comes through liquidators here rather than America,” she said.

More than 20,000 investors are estimated to have been bamboozled in the two-decade fraud, which was uncovered in 2009.

"No other country approached the magnitude of the United States as a generator of CD sales … Stanford employees managed and directed the CD enterprise from the United States with no meaningful input from Antigua," Godbey wrote in a 60-page decision.

Godbey implied that the Antigua & Barbuda joint liquidators had engaged in "repeated interference" by challenging the authority of U.S. receiver Ralph Janvey.

Grant Thornton had unsuccessfully sought "non-main" recognition that would allow them to gather evidence and conduct interviews provided they cooperated with Janvey, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and others.

Elizabeth Ortega, a spokeswoman for the Antigua & Barbuda liquidators, said in a statement that they are likely to appeal.



"We are disappointed that the American court has ruled in a manner inconsistent with the recognition already granted to the joint liquidators in the United Kingdom and Switzerland," she said.

In the meantime, Janvey has reportedly accused the Antigua & Barbuda liquidators of blocking his efforts to recover money from accounts held outside the USA.

• < Prev
• Next >