A Full-Service Bank: R. Allen Stanford and the CIA

[Ed Jewett]

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

A Full-Service Bank: R. Allen Stanford and the CIA


In a scandal-plagued era such as ours, scarred by murderous wars, occupations and corruption that would make a Roman emperor blush, accused crooks have names; even juiced ones like R. Allen Stanford.

Last year, when a federal court in Texas handed down indictments charging Stanford International Bank (SIB) and its officers with "orchestrating a fraudulent, multibillion dollar investment scheme," I wondered: was there more to the story?

Indeed there was.

Once described by fawning media as a "flamboyant Texan" and "philanthropist," Stanford was founder and sole shareholder of a global banking empire once conservatively valued at $50 billion.

According to the federal indictment, "Sir Allen," as he was dubbed by a corrupt former minister of Antigua, ran a massive Ponzi scheme camouflaged as a bank that sold some $7 billion in self-styled "certificates of deposit" and $1.2 billion in mutual funds.

Operated from behind a façade of well-appointed offices and with a jet-set lifestyle to match, the Stanford grift may have been impressive but it was a scam from the get-go. Lured by "high rates that exceed those available through true certificates of deposits offered by traditional banks," thousands lost their shirts.

Those high rates were a lie and the bank's "unique investment strategy" about as legitimate as a penny-stock fraud or advance fee scam on the internet. Of the $8 billion hoovered up by the banker and his cronies, only about $500 million have been recovered.

Facing the prospect of years in prison, The Miami Herald reported that SIB's chief financial officer James Davis, once Stanford's college roommate and originally charged in the indictment, copped a plea to save his own neck.

Davis told the Justice Department that "his boss had been stealing from investors for decades while paying bribes to regulators and even performing blood oaths never to reveal his secrets."

Talk about a wise guy!

And with connections and generous pay-outs to U.S. politicians going back more than a decade, 65% of which went to Democrats including our "change" president, Allen Stanford was plugged-in.

Evidence also suggests he may have gotten an assist covering his tracks from regulators and U.S. secret state agencies, including the CIA.

SEC Stand Down

Allen Stanford did business the American way; he swindled depositors and then siphoned-off the proceeds into a spider's web of offshore accounts.

The indictment charges "it was part of the conspiracy that Stanford ... and others would cause the movement of millions of dollars of fraudulently obtained investors' funds from and among bank accounts located in the Southern District of Texas and elsewhere in the United States to various bank accounts located outside of the United States ... in order to exercise exclusive control over the investors' funds."

Auditors learned that funds were moved through Stanford-controlled accounts to offshore banks, including HSBC in London, Bank Julius Baer in Zurich and eight others; banks which have figured in past money laundering or tax-avoidance scandals. None have been charged with an offense in connection with the affair.

In all, 28 numbered accounts were listed by prosecutors, veritable black holes that escaped scrutiny; that is if regulators in Washington were minding the store, which they weren't.

Years earlier, SEC investigators at the commission's Ft. Worth office uncovered evidence of wrongdoing. According to an explosive report by the SEC's Office of the Inspector General, Ft. Worth examiners launched a series of probes in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2004 exploring SIB practices but their diligence was sabotaged by high-level officials.

That report, Investigation of the SEC's Response to Concerns Regarding Robert Allen Stanford's Alleged Ponzi Scheme, Case No. OIG-526, March 31, 2010, paints a damning picture of the regulatory process.

The inspector general states: "While the Fort Worth Examination group made multiple efforts after each examination to convince the Fort Worth Enforcement program ('Enforcement') to open and conduct an investigation of Stanford, no meaningful effort was made by Enforcement to investigate the potential fraud or to bring an action to attempt to stop it until late 2005."

Last month, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that staff members, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared management retaliation, told the newspaper that higher-ups wanted "tools to do away with people who have a dissenting opinion."

Senior managers called the probes a "goat screw" and ordered them killed.

The OIG investigation "found that the former head of Enforcement in Fort Worth, who played a significant role in multiple decisions over the years to quash investigations of Stanford, sought to represent Stanford on three separate occasions after he left the Commission, and in fact represented Stanford briefly in 2006 before he was informed by the SEC Ethics Office that it was improper to do so." (emphasis added)

In Florida, The Miami Herald revealed that state regulators did the SEC one better and gave the bank carte blanche to operate secretly, moving "vast amounts of money offshore--without reporting a penny to regulators."

The arrangement between the bank and the Florida Office of Financial Regulation was so brazen, that Stanford's company "was allowed to sell hundreds of millions in bank notes without allowing regulators to check for fraud."

And once those suspect instruments were sold, the Herald reported that "employees shredded records of the trust agreements and CD purchases once the original documents were sent to Antigua, state records show."

A sweet deal if you can get it, or have powerful friends who might wish to avoid messy inquiries touching upon sensitive matters.

The New York Times reported last year that current charges "stem from an inquiry opened in October 2006," that is, nearly a decade "after a routine exam of Stanford Group, according to Stephen J. Korotash, an associate regional director of enforcement with the agency's Fort Worth office."

Korotash told the Times that the SEC "stood down" its investigation "at the request of another federal agency, which he declined to name."

According to BusinessWeek, in 2006 the Bush administration "bestowed on his intelligence czar ... broad authority, in the name of national security" to excuse companies from "their normal accounting and securities-disclosure obligations" if such disclosures revealed "certain top-secret defense projects."

At the time, William McLucas, the Securities and Exchange Commission's former enforcement chief told the publication that the ability to conceal financial information from regulators under the rubric of "national security" could lead some companies "to play fast and loose with their numbers."

The former official said, "it could be that you have a bunch of books and records out there that no one knows about."

In response to media reports, congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), wrote a letter to SEC Chair Mary Schapiro last year, demanding documents, and answers, why the SEC suspended investigations of the "Stanford Group under pressure from another unidentified federal agency."

The Ohio congressman said, "if this is true ... our subcommittee will demand that the SEC reveal the name of that agency which told it not to enforce federal laws which protect investors."

Neither documents nor answers were forthcoming.

Cynics might see something untoward here, but I think it's all just a coincidence, like drug planes bought with bundles of cash laundered through American banks.

Drug Probes Killed

In 1986 during the Iran-Contra period, Allen Stanford's Guardian International Bank set up shop on the sleepy Caribbean isle of Montserrat (pop. 5,870).

It didn't take long before the bank came under scrutiny. Guardian was the subject of a joint Scotland Yard-FBI investigation "into so-called 'brass-plate' banks," The Independent disclosed.

According to reporters David Connett and Stephen Foley, the bank "was suspected of laundering drug money from the notorious Medellin and Cali drug cartels run by Pablo Escobar and the Orejuela brothers."

During the Iran-Contra scandal, congressional investigators and journalists scrutinized links between Colombian drug traffickers and the CIA's Nicaraguan Contra army.

By 1986, evidence began to emerge that top Contra officials and the Agency enjoyed cosy ties with both Escobar and the Orejuela brothers. Under pressure from the Reagan administration however, both Congress and corporate media deep-sixed the story as the affair was covered-up.

A decade later, largely as a result of outrage generated by the late Gary Webb's Dark Alliance series, a memorandum of understanding between Reagan's Justice Department and the Agency entered the public record. That 1982 memo legally freed the CIA from reporting drug smuggling by their assets.

Former FBI agent Ross Gaffney who led the Guardian probe, told Connett and Foley that "we suspected that Stanford's bank was involved in money laundering." But before that investigation could be developed, Stanford suddenly pulled up stakes and "voluntarily surrendered his Montserrat banking licence and left the island."

Gaffney said that even after Guardian closed, the FBI "continued to take an interest in Stanford and set up a second inquiry into that bank after receiving intelligence that it continued to launder money for the Medellin and Cali cartels."

The former federal agent told The Independent, "We had hard intelligence about what he was doing and we began to develop it" but the investigation died or more likely, killed, by officials higher-up the food chain.

After leaving Montserrat, Stanford trained his sights on Antigua and Barbuda and developed a close relationship with former prime minister Lester Bird.

"Under the Bird family leadership" Connett and Foley reported, "the island was widely regarded as one of the most corrupt in the Caribbean, with well-documented links to arms and drug smuggling and money laundering."

According to The Independent, "in 1990, Israeli automatic weapons ordered by Mr Bird's brother Vere turned up in the hands of a notorious Colombian drug trafficker."

Despite suspicions, it appears that Stanford was golden as far as the feds were concerned; just another guy with an endless supply of "get-out-of-jail-free" cards.

One reason Stanford operated with impunity, the BBC informs us, is that he "may have been a US government informer."

DEA documents seen by BBC's investigative unit Panorama, suggest that "drug money [was] originally paid in to Stanford International Bank by agents acting for a feared Mexican drug lord known as the 'Lord of the Heavens'."

Confidential DEA sources believe that Stanford turned over "details of money-laundering from Latin American clients from Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela and Ecuador," thus "effectively guaranteeing himself a decade's worth of 'protection' from the authorities, especially the SEC."

"We were convinced that Stanford's bank attracted millions of narco-dollars," sources told Panorama, "but it was very difficult to get the evidence to nail him."

"The word is" BBC reported, "that Stanford has been a confidential informer for the DEA since '99."

Snitch or not, this raises intriguing questions.

Was Stanford's bank a black hole which U.S. intelligence agencies could exploit, in the interest of "national security" mind you, and therefore exempt from "normal disclosure obligations" as BusinessWeek averred?

If this were so, then even if Stanford were an informant he could have continued to launder drug money and profit nicely; such gentleman's agreements are not without precedent.

One need only glance at internal U.S. government documents released by the National Security Archive, documents which revealed the Cali cartel's close collaboration with corrupt Colombian police, neofascist paramilitaries and the CIA when Medellín drug lord Pablo Escobar was run to ground.

Pointedly, was Stanford's banking empire another in a long line of institutional channels that drug cartels and the CIA could both profit from?

Banks, Drugs and Covert Operations

Across the decades, historians, investigative journalists and researchers have uncovered strong evidence that various banks have served as virtual cut-outs for CIA covert operations.

Readers need only recall illegal activities by institutions as diverse as Paul Helliwell's Castle Bank and Trust in the Bahamas, Frank Nugan and Michael Hand's Nugan Hand Bank in Sydney and the Cayman Islands, or the far-flung empire of Agha Hasan Abedi's Bank and Credit and Commerce International.

Separated in time and geography, what all three banks had in common was their close proximity to international drug trafficking networks and the CIA, particularly in areas of acute interest to U.S. policy planners. Did Stanford International Bank have a similar arrangement with the Agency?

When the scandal finally broke, the Houston Chronicle reported that authorities had been "looking for ties to organized drug cartels and money laundering, going back at least a decade."

In the late 1990s, court documents revealed that "operatives of the Juarez cartel began opening accounts at Stanford's Antigua-based bank," laundering profits amassed by the Amado Carrillo Fuentes organization, the late "Lord of the Heavens" referred to in the BBC report.

The Chronicle notes that Fuentes' representatives "used Stanford International Bank to open 10 accounts and deposit $3 million." We should bear in mind however, these represent only known accounts. Were there others? Federal and state investigators have said that there were.

After authorities determined the accounts were held by a notorious drug cartel, Stanford turned over the $3 million. Yet despite hard evidence of criminal wrongdoing, federal officials told the Chronicle that "any alleged Stanford connection to drug cartels and their money could lie buried in the paperwork gathered for the Security and Exchange Commission's civil inquiry."

One might even say rather conveniently.

During the same period, Texas state securities regulators uncovered more evidence of money laundering by Stanford entities. But because it involved offshore banks, they "referred it" to the FBI and SEC.

Texas Securities Commissioner Denise Voigt Crawford told a Senate Finance Committee last year, "Why it took 10 years for the feds to move on it, I cannot answer."

Miffed by government foot-dragging, Crawford added, "We worked with the FBI and the SEC and basically gave them the case. We told them what we'd seen and they were going to run with it."

But that investigation died on the vine.

Echoing similar themes, The Observer disclosed an FBI source close to the investigation confirmed that the Bureau "was looking at links to international drug gangs as part of the huge investigation into Stanford's banking activities."

The Observer reported that Mexican authorities seized one of Stanford's private jets in connection with alleged links to the Gulf cartel and said that "cheques found inside the plane were linked to the cartel, which is one of the most violent criminal organisations in the world."

DEA sources told the London newspaper "there may well have been a trail connecting his Mexican affairs to narco-trafficking interests." However, a second DEA official told The Observer, "I think we'll find that any possible drug-related trail and SEC priorities are not all in the same frame."

A curious statement considering the billions of dollars in fraudulent activities alleged against the bank, some of which may have been derived from laundering drug money.

One would assume that evidence of serious wrongdoing would be motive enough to take a hard look at the allegations and not concoct a fairy tale that these charges lie "buried in the paperwork"!

A U.S. drug enforcement official told The Observer, "Any major US interest seeking to avoid fully disclosed investments would have to go to pretty careful lengths to avoid encountering cartel interests."

"Anyone seeking to conceal or launder money would find it in safe and lucrative hands were they to forge alliances with, rather than skirt, the cartels," The Observer noted, and would "find them accommodating in terms of remuneration." The official hastened to add, it's "nothing anyone will confirm for Stanford right now."

The question is: why?

A Full-Service Bank

One possible answer may revolve around charges that SIB's Venezuela branch was a conduit for laundered CIA funds.

If true, then the Agency would be dead set against trial disclosures that revealed the bank had been involved in laundering drug money, particularly if narcotics syndicates are playing a role in U.S. destabilization efforts there.

Months before Stanford's empire collapsed, Venezuela's socialist government launched a raid on SIB offices in Caracas.

The Daily Telegraph reported that "Sir Allen Stanford, the Texan billionaire ... is now at the centre of an international spying row."

The conservative British newspaper disclosed that "officials from Venezuelan military intelligence raided a branch of his offshore bank over claims that its employees were paid by the CIA to spy on the south American country."

Although corporate media in the U.S. dismissed Venezuelan allegations as propaganda, questions persist.

While on a charm offensive before his arrest last year, Stanford gave an interview to CNBC's Scott Cohn. When asked about claims that his bank may have been a cut-out for the Agency, this curious exchange took place:

Cohn: "You just by nature of your position and where you were got to know a lot of people in Latin America, in Africa, in Europe, around the world, and it strikes me that somebody in your position would be useful to the authorities in the US trying to find out what was going on there, what was going on in places like Venezuela. Can you tell me about any sort of role you played that way, were you helpful to the authorities in the US?"

Stanford: "Are you talking about the CIA?"

Cohn: "Well, you tell me."

Stanford: "I'm not going to talk about that."

Cohn: "Why not?"

Stanford: "I'm just not going to talk about that."

Cohn: "Well, I mean, am I--is my premise correct that someone in your position would be helpful to those who wanted to know what was going on?"

Stanford: "I really don't have anything to add to that that would be of any value."

Stanford's reticence is certainly understandable, considering Frank Hand's fate 30 years ago.

During a similar scandal when the CIA-linked Nugan Hand bank collapsed amid charges of fraud and drug money laundering, the chief executive turned up dead in his Mercedes with a shot to the head.

Despite evidence uncovered by investigations going back to the 1980s, drug money laundering charges or any reference to Agency activities will not figure in the Justice Department's case when Stanford goes on trial in January.

As ABC News delicately put it, SEC action against Stanford "may have complicated the federal drug case."

Underscoring the federal government's reluctance to explore this dark corner of Allen Stanford's career, it might do well to keep in mind what one airline executive told investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker during his probe into the 9/11 attacks.

"Sometimes when things don't make business sense, its because they do make sense...just in some other way."
Posted by Antifascist at 5:20 PM

[Jan Klimkowski]

Nugan Hand all over again.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

A Full-Service Bank: R. Allen Stanford and the CIA


In a scandal-plagued era such as ours, scarred by murderous wars, occupations and corruption that would make a Roman emperor blush, accused crooks have names; even juiced ones like R. Allen Stanford.

Last year, when a federal court in Texas handed down indictments charging Stanford International Bank (SIB) and its officers with "orchestrating a fraudulent, multibillion dollar investment scheme," I wondered: was there more to the story?

Indeed there was.

Once described by fawning media as a "flamboyant Texan" and "philanthropist," Stanford was founder and sole shareholder of a global banking empire once conservatively valued at $50 billion.

According to the federal indictment, "Sir Allen," as he was dubbed by a corrupt former minister of Antigua, ran a massive Ponzi scheme camouflaged as a bank that sold some $7 billion in self-styled "certificates of deposit" and $1.2 billion in mutual funds.

Operated from behind a fa�ade of well-appointed offices and with a jet-set lifestyle to match, the Stanford grift may have been impressive but it was a scam from the get-go. Lured by "high rates that exceed those available through true certificates of deposits offered by traditional banks," thousands lost their shirts.

Those high rates were a lie and the bank's "unique investment strategy" about as legitimate as a penny-stock fraud or advance fee scam on the internet. Of the $8 billion hoovered up by the banker and his cronies, only about $500 million have been recovered.

Facing the prospect of years in prison, The Miami Herald reported that SIB's chief financial officer James Davis, once Stanford's college roommate and originally charged in the indictment, copped a plea to save his own neck.

Davis told the Justice Department that "his boss had been stealing from investors for decades while paying bribes to regulators and even performing blood oaths never to reveal his secrets."

Talk about a wise guy!

And with connections and generous pay-outs to U.S. politicians going back more than a decade, 65% of which went to Democrats including our "change" president, Allen Stanford was plugged-in.

Evidence also suggests he may have gotten an assist covering his tracks from regulators and U.S. secret state agencies, including the CIA.

SEC Stand Down

Allen Stanford did business the American way; he swindled depositors and then siphoned-off the proceeds into a spider's web of offshore accounts.

The indictment charges "it was part of the conspiracy that Stanford ... and others would cause the movement of millions of dollars of fraudulently obtained investors' funds from and among bank accounts located in the Southern District of Texas and elsewhere in the United States to various bank accounts located outside of the United States ... in order to exercise exclusive control over the investors' funds."

Auditors learned that funds were moved through Stanford-controlled accounts to offshore banks, including HSBC in London, Bank Julius Baer in Zurich and eight others; banks which have figured in past money laundering or tax-avoidance scandals. None have been charged with an offense in connection with the affair.

In all, 28 numbered accounts were listed by prosecutors, veritable black holes that escaped scrutiny; that is if regulators in Washington were minding the store, which they weren't.

Years earlier, SEC investigators at the commission's Ft. Worth office uncovered evidence of wrongdoing. According to an explosive report by the SEC's Office of the Inspector General, Ft. Worth examiners launched a series of probes in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2004 exploring SIB practices but their diligence was sabotaged by high-level officials.

That report, Investigation of the SEC's Response to Concerns Regarding Robert Allen Stanford's Alleged Ponzi Scheme, Case No. OIG-526, March 31, 2010, paints a damning picture of the regulatory process.

The inspector general states: "While the Fort Worth Examination group made multiple efforts after each examination to convince the Fort Worth Enforcement program ('Enforcement') to open and conduct an investigation of Stanford, no meaningful effort was made by Enforcement to investigate the potential fraud or to bring an action to attempt to stop it until late 2005."

Last month, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that staff members, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared management retaliation, told the newspaper that higher-ups wanted "tools to do away with people who have a dissenting opinion."

Senior managers called the probes a "goat screw" and ordered them killed.

The OIG investigation "found that the former head of Enforcement in Fort Worth, who played a significant role in multiple decisions over the years to quash investigations of Stanford, sought to represent Stanford on three separate occasions after he left the Commission, and in fact represented Stanford briefly in 2006 before he was informed by the SEC Ethics Office that it was improper to do so." (emphasis added)

In Florida, The Miami Herald revealed that state regulators did the SEC one better and gave the bank carte blanche to operate secretly, moving "vast amounts of money offshore--without reporting a penny to regulators."

The arrangement between the bank and the Florida Office of Financial Regulation was so brazen, that Stanford's company "was allowed to sell hundreds of millions in bank notes without allowing regulators to check for fraud."

And once those suspect instruments were sold, the Herald reported that "employees shredded records of the trust agreements and CD purchases once the original documents were sent to Antigua, state records show."

A sweet deal if you can get it, or have powerful friends who might wish to avoid messy inquiries touching upon sensitive matters.

The New York Times reported last year that current charges "stem from an inquiry opened in October 2006," that is, nearly a decade "after a routine exam of Stanford Group, according to Stephen J. Korotash, an associate regional director of enforcement with the agency's Fort Worth office."

Korotash told the Times that the SEC "stood down" its investigation "at the request of another federal agency, which he declined to name."

According to BusinessWeek, in 2006 the Bush administration "bestowed on his intelligence czar ... broad authority, in the name of national security" to excuse companies from "their normal accounting and securities-disclosure obligations" if such disclosures revealed "certain top-secret defense projects."

At the time, William McLucas, the Securities and Exchange Commission's former enforcement chief told the publication that the ability to conceal financial information from regulators under the rubric of "national security" could lead some companies "to play fast and loose with their numbers."

The former official said, "it could be that you have a bunch of books and records out there that no one knows about."

In response to media reports, congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), wrote a letter to SEC Chair Mary Schapiro last year, demanding documents, and answers, why the SEC suspended investigations of the "Stanford Group under pressure from another unidentified federal agency."

The Ohio congressman said, "if this is true ... our subcommittee will demand that the SEC reveal the name of that agency which told it not to enforce federal laws which protect investors."

Neither documents nor answers were forthcoming.

Cynics might see something untoward here, but I think it's all just a coincidence, like drug planes bought with bundles of cash laundered through American banks.

Drug Probes Killed

In 1986 during the Iran-Contra period, Allen Stanford's Guardian International Bank set up shop on the sleepy Caribbean isle of Montserrat (pop. 5,870).

It didn't take long before the bank came under scrutiny. Guardian was the subject of a joint Scotland Yard-FBI investigation "into so-called 'brass-plate' banks," The Independent disclosed.

According to reporters David Connett and Stephen Foley, the bank "was suspected of laundering drug money from the notorious Medellin and Cali drug cartels run by Pablo Escobar and the Orejuela brothers."

During the Iran-Contra scandal, congressional investigators and journalists scrutinized links between Colombian drug traffickers and the CIA's Nicaraguan Contra army.

By 1986, evidence began to emerge that top Contra officials and the Agency enjoyed cosy ties with both Escobar and the Orejuela brothers. Under pressure from the Reagan administration however, both Congress and corporate media deep-sixed the story as the affair was covered-up.

A decade later, largely as a result of outrage generated by the late Gary Webb's Dark Alliance series, a memorandum of understanding between Reagan's Justice Department and the Agency entered the public record. That 1982 memo legally freed the CIA from reporting drug smuggling by their assets.

Former FBI agent Ross Gaffney who led the Guardian probe, told Connett and Foley that "we suspected that Stanford's bank was involved in money laundering." But before that investigation could be developed, Stanford suddenly pulled up stakes and "voluntarily surrendered his Montserrat banking licence and left the island."

Gaffney said that even after Guardian closed, the FBI "continued to take an interest in Stanford and set up a second inquiry into that bank after receiving intelligence that it continued to launder money for the Medellin and Cali cartels."

The former federal agent told The Independent, "We had hard intelligence about what he was doing and we began to develop it" but the investigation died or more likely, killed, by officials higher-up the food chain.

After leaving Montserrat, Stanford trained his sights on Antigua and Barbuda and developed a close relationship with former prime minister Lester Bird.

"Under the Bird family leadership" Connett and Foley reported, "the island was widely regarded as one of the most corrupt in the Caribbean, with well-documented links to arms and drug smuggling and money laundering."

According to The Independent, "in 1990, Israeli automatic weapons ordered by Mr Bird's brother Vere turned up in the hands of a notorious Colombian drug trafficker."

Despite suspicions, it appears that Stanford was golden as far as the feds were concerned; just another guy with an endless supply of "get-out-of-jail-free" cards.

One reason Stanford operated with impunity, the BBC informs us, is that he "may have been a US government informer."

DEA documents seen by BBC's investigative unit Panorama, suggest that "drug money [was] originally paid in to Stanford International Bank by agents acting for a feared Mexican drug lord known as the 'Lord of the Heavens'."

Confidential DEA sources believe that Stanford turned over "details of money-laundering from Latin American clients from Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela and Ecuador," thus "effectively guaranteeing himself a decade's worth of 'protection' from the authorities, especially the SEC."

"We were convinced that Stanford's bank attracted millions of narco-dollars," sources told Panorama, "but it was very difficult to get the evidence to nail him."

"The word is" BBC reported, "that Stanford has been a confidential informer for the DEA since '99."

Snitch or not, this raises intriguing questions.

Was Stanford's bank a black hole which U.S. intelligence agencies could exploit, in the interest of "national security" mind you, and therefore exempt from "normal disclosure obligations" as BusinessWeek averred?

If this were so, then even if Stanford were an informant he could have continued to launder drug money and profit nicely; such gentleman's agreements are not without precedent.

One need only glance at internal U.S. government documents released by the National Security Archive, documents which revealed the Cali cartel's close collaboration with corrupt Colombian police, neofascist paramilitaries and the CIA when Medell�n drug lord Pablo Escobar was run to ground.

Pointedly, was Stanford's banking empire another in a long line of institutional channels that drug cartels and the CIA could both profit from?

Banks, Drugs and Covert Operations

Across the decades, historians, investigative journalists and researchers have uncovered strong evidence that various banks have served as virtual cut-outs for CIA covert operations.

Readers need only recall illegal activities by institutions as diverse as Paul Helliwell's Castle Bank and Trust in the Bahamas, Frank Nugan and Michael Hand's Nugan Hand Bank in Sydney and the Cayman Islands, or the far-flung empire of Agha Hasan Abedi's Bank and Credit and Commerce International.

Separated in time and geography, what all three banks had in common was their close proximity to international drug trafficking networks and the CIA, particularly in areas of acute interest to U.S. policy planners. Did Stanford International Bank have a similar arrangement with the Agency?

When the scandal finally broke, the Houston Chronicle reported that authorities had been "looking for ties to organized drug cartels and money laundering, going back at least a decade."

In the late 1990s, court documents revealed that "operatives of the Juarez cartel began opening accounts at Stanford's Antigua-based bank," laundering profits amassed by the Amado Carrillo Fuentes organization, the late "Lord of the Heavens" referred to in the BBC report.

The Chronicle notes that Fuentes' representatives "used Stanford International Bank to open 10 accounts and deposit $3 million." We should bear in mind however, these represent only known accounts. Were there others? Federal and state investigators have said that there were.

After authorities determined the accounts were held by a notorious drug cartel, Stanford turned over the $3 million. Yet despite hard evidence of criminal wrongdoing, federal officials told the Chronicle that "any alleged Stanford connection to drug cartels and their money could lie buried in the paperwork gathered for the Security and Exchange Commission's civil inquiry."

One might even say rather conveniently.

During the same period, Texas state securities regulators uncovered more evidence of money laundering by Stanford entities. But because it involved offshore banks, they "referred it" to the FBI and SEC.

Texas Securities Commissioner Denise Voigt Crawford told a Senate Finance Committee last year, "Why it took 10 years for the feds to move on it, I cannot answer."

Miffed by government foot-dragging, Crawford added, "We worked with the FBI and the SEC and basically gave them the case. We told them what we'd seen and they were going to run with it."

But that investigation died on the vine.

Echoing similar themes, The Observer disclosed an FBI source close to the investigation confirmed that the Bureau "was looking at links to international drug gangs as part of the huge investigation into Stanford's banking activities."

The Observer reported that Mexican authorities seized one of Stanford's private jets in connection with alleged links to the Gulf cartel and said that "cheques found inside the plane were linked to the cartel, which is one of the most violent criminal organisations in the world."

DEA sources told the London newspaper "there may well have been a trail connecting his Mexican affairs to narco-trafficking interests." However, a second DEA official told The Observer, "I think we'll find that any possible drug-related trail and SEC priorities are not all in the same frame."

A curious statement considering the billions of dollars in fraudulent activities alleged against the bank, some of which may have been derived from laundering drug money.

One would assume that evidence of serious wrongdoing would be motive enough to take a hard look at the allegations and not concoct a fairy tale that these charges lie "buried in the paperwork"!

A U.S. drug enforcement official told The Observer, "Any major US interest seeking to avoid fully disclosed investments would have to go to pretty careful lengths to avoid encountering cartel interests."

"Anyone seeking to conceal or launder money would find it in safe and lucrative hands were they to forge alliances with, rather than skirt, the cartels," The Observer noted, and would "find them accommodating in terms of remuneration." The official hastened to add, it's "nothing anyone will confirm for Stanford right now."

The question is: why?

A Full-Service Bank

One possible answer may revolve around charges that SIB's Venezuela branch was a conduit for laundered CIA funds.

If true, then the Agency would be dead set against trial disclosures that revealed the bank had been involved in laundering drug money, particularly if narcotics syndicates are playing a role in U.S. destabilization efforts there.

Months before Stanford's empire collapsed, Venezuela's socialist government launched a raid on SIB offices in Caracas.

The Daily Telegraph reported that "Sir Allen Stanford, the Texan billionaire ... is now at the centre of an international spying row."

The conservative British newspaper disclosed that "officials from Venezuelan military intelligence raided a branch of his offshore bank over claims that its employees were paid by the CIA to spy on the south American country."

Although corporate media in the U.S. dismissed Venezuelan allegations as propaganda, questions persist.

While on a charm offensive before his arrest last year, Stanford gave an interview to CNBC's Scott Cohn. When asked about claims that his bank may have been a cut-out for the Agency, this curious exchange took place:

Cohn: "You just by nature of your position and where you were got to know a lot of people in Latin America, in Africa, in Europe, around the world, and it strikes me that somebody in your position would be useful to the authorities in the US trying to find out what was going on there, what was going on in places like Venezuela. Can you tell me about any sort of role you played that way, were you helpful to the authorities in the US?"

Stanford: "Are you talking about the CIA?"

Cohn: "Well, you tell me."

Stanford: "I'm not going to talk about that."

Cohn: "Why not?"

Stanford: "I'm just not going to talk about that."

Cohn: "Well, I mean, am I--is my premise correct that someone in your position would be helpful to those who wanted to know what was going on?"

Stanford: "I really don't have anything to add to that that would be of any value."

Stanford's reticence is certainly understandable, considering Frank Hand's fate 30 years ago.

During a similar scandal when the CIA-linked Nugan Hand bank collapsed amid charges of fraud and drug money laundering, the chief executive turned up dead in his Mercedes with a shot to the head.

Despite evidence uncovered by investigations going back to the 1980s, drug money laundering charges or any reference to Agency activities will not figure in the Justice Department's case when Stanford goes on trial in January.

As ABC News delicately put it, SEC action against Stanford "may have complicated the federal drug case."

Underscoring the federal government's reluctance to explore this dark corner of Allen Stanford's career, it might do well to keep in mind what one airline executive told investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker during his probe into the 9/11 attacks.

"Sometimes when things don't make business sense, its because they do make sense...just in some other way."
Posted by Antifascist at 5:20 PM

[Ed Jewett]

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Allen Stanford's Trial Indefinitely Delayed. Suspected CIA Banker Became "Drug Dependent" -- in Federal Custody


The strange case of accused swindler and suspected CIA banker R. Allen Stanford became a whole lot stranger last week.

During a preliminary hearing in Houston, U.S. District Judge David Hittner ruled that Stanford, charged with orchestrating an $8 billion dollar Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors, cannot be tried until he undergoes detoxification for a drug addiction acquired after his incarceration in a federal detention facility.

Talk about a convenient turn of events!

"Nothing can be done until the medical aspect is cleared up," Hittner told defense lawyers and prosecutors during an all-day hearing that examined Stanford's mental competence to stand trial, Bloomberg News reported.

The banker's court-appointed defense team is seeking a two-year delay, citing the mountain of evidence, some two million pages at last count, they must review before the trial can proceed. Stanford's apparent inability to participate in his own defense would certainly complicate matters.

With a net worth once estimated at $2 billion, the accused fraudster was declared indigent last fall after his assets were seized and (known) accounts frozen following his 2009 arrest and indictment.

In October, U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas ruled that Stanford and codefendants Laura Pendergest-Holt, Gilberto Lopez, Mark Kuhurt and Leroy King, the former chief regulator of the Bank of Antigua, cannot tap a $100 million Lloyds of London insurance policy to pay attorney fees.

According to the ruling, "lawyers for Lloyds had proven at a trial in August that it was likely that Stanford had committed money laundering." The court declared "that the policy's money laundering exclusion applies to justify underwriters' denial of insurance coverage at this time," Reuters reported.

Indicted eighteen months ago on 21 civil and criminal counts, including mail, wire, securities fraud and money laundering, Stanford is also suspected of running another in a long line of "full service banks" for American secret state agencies, including the CIA.

Interestingly enough, one of Stanford's early defense teams was led by none other than Robert S. Bennett, the high-powered attorney who successfully fought off prosecution for his client, Jose A. Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's clandestine division, accused of destroying 92 torture videotapes of prisoners held at Agency "black sites."

This latest twist in the sleazy affair raise uncomfortable questions for prosecutors: just how does one become drug addicted while in federal custody?

According to Bloomberg, "three psychiatrists, one working for the government and two working for the defense, testified that Stanford's dependency on prescription anti-anxiety medication and the after-effects of a head injury he sustained in a jailhouse beating left him unfit for the trial" which was slated to begin later this month.

Victor Scarano, a defense psychiatrist testified that the banker's dependency on the anti-anxiety drug clonazepam, along with the powerful anti-depressant mirtazapine, was the result of "overmedication" by his jailers.

Scarano testified that for more than a year Stanford "has been taking 3 milligrams a day of the anti-anxiety drug clonazepam, and that a normal dose is up to 1 milligram a day for no longer than two weeks," the Houston Chronicle disclosed.

The psychiatrist told the court that "he is unable to work effectively and rationally with his attorneys in his defense against the charges."

"He is unable to focus, he's unable to keep a train of thought," Scarano testified.

A second psychiatrist, Steven Rosenblatt, hired by the government, "testified that Stanford is suffering from delirium, likely brought on by the medication."

During Thursday's hearing, Stanford's attorney Ali Fazel, told the court that his client had been assaulted while in federal custody, severely beaten and that it was prison physicians who prescribed the medications to which the accused swindler is now addicted. "It's the government that caused the problem," Fazel said.

The Independent averred this will raise "fresh and disturbing questions about the deterioration of Stanford's mental and physical health in the 18 months he has already spent behind bars."

Among the questions likely to be raised is why, for some unknown and still unexplained reason prison doctors dispensed triple the normal dose of a suite of drugs known to produce untoward side effects.

According to Wikipedia, clonazepam is used to treat epilepsy, anxiety disorder and panic disorder, and in combination with lithium and haloperidol, it is also used for the initial treatment of mania or acute psychosis.

This is certainly a curious choice for long-term treatment of a concussion. While Stanford may be a notorious huckster who believed he could do no wrong, even as he allegedly robbed investors blind, there is no evidence he suffered a psychotic break with reality. In fact, the evidence suggests quite the opposite.

Clonazepam is characterized by its "fast onset of action and high effectiveness rate and low toxicity in overdose but has drawbacks due to adverse reactions including paradoxical effects, drowsiness, and cognitive impairment."

According to scholarly literature cited by Wikipedia, "cognitive impairments can persist for at least 6 months after withdrawal of clonazepam; it is unclear whether full recovery of memory functions occurs. Other long-term effects of benzodiazepines include tolerance, a benzodiazepine dependence as well as a benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome occurs in a third of people treated with clonazepam for longer than 4 weeks."

Common side effects include drowsiness, interference with cognitive and motor performance, irritability and aggression, psychomotor agitation, lack of motivation, loss of libido, hallucinations, short-term memory loss, and what are described as "anterograde amnesia (common with higher doses)" or, the "loss of the ability to create new memories ... leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past."

The second drug dispensed to Stanford, the anti-depressant mirtazapine, is used in the treatment of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorders and is said to "exacerbate some patients' depression or anxiety or cause suicidal ideation," Wikipedia informs us.

While "the potential for dangerous drug interactions with mirtazapine is considered to be very low," the drug may "increase the effects of ... benzodiazepines," e.g. clonazepam, the apparent drug of choice deployed by Stanford's jailers as part of his "treatment."

Attorneys and psychiatrists told the court that the accused swindler was treated for more than a year with triple the "normal dose" of a drug known for producing "paradoxical effects" including "a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past."

The question is why?

While Stanford's "overmedication" may have an innocent explanation, we cannot dismiss the possibility that someone or some entity perhaps, say an intelligence agency with decades of pharmacological knowledge derived from illicit human experiments might be interested in inducing permanent "cognitive impairment" in the dodgy banker.

A simpler explanation however, such as gross negligence on the part of his jailers cannot be ruled out. It is even quite possible, as assistant U.S. attorney Gregg Costa asserted, that Stanford "could have been faking the delirium in order to be let out of jail before facing trial" as The New York Times reported.

And given the wretched conditions that exist in American gulags, where control of prison populations through overmedication is the norm not the exception, this could also be a mitigating factor in Stanford's case. As Human Rights Watch points out, prisoners adjudged mentally ill often receive "inappropriate kinds or amounts of psychotropic medication that further impairs their ability to function."

On the other hand, Allen Stanford's high-profile, his close proximity to drug-fueled intelligence operations, decades of hastily-closed investigations into alleged security frauds and a "stand down" by the SEC "at the request of another federal agency" as The New York Times disclosed, coupled with drugs investigations that "lie buried in the paperwork" gathered by the SEC as the Houston Chronicle averred, however one cares to slice it, a drug addiction acquired in federal custody does open a new, and highly suspicious, chapter in the Stanford drama.

The maddeningly complex character of Allen Stanford's operations as the Financial Times revealed, and what role other giant banks including Bank Julius Baer, Credit Suisse and HSBC, which acted as SIB's correspondent bank for all European deposits played in the affair, may never be unraveled if he cannot stand trial.

In this respect, a permanent "inability to recall the recent past" induced by federal prison authorities may be just what the doctor ordered.
Posted by Antifascist at 11:06 AM

[Peter Lemkin]

'They' literally have a cookbook of ways to get around the law..if recipe A doesn't work, certainly recipe T will. Without going into details, and I was a minnow compared to these guys and fighting on the 'other side' [but the recipe book can be used either way!]. I once had a trial of legal travesty.....where the judge first refused my lawyer to introduce into evidence the very ONE item that would have proved my innocence of the trumped-up charge. When pushed on it, he adjourned the court due to his [declared] golf appointment. We lost and I told my lawyer to immediately appeal. I got a call the next day from the lawyer that we could NOT appeal. I asked why. He said the court has said that the transcript of the first trial had been lost, so no appeal was possible. [NB - I was working on JFK research then, and had good reason to believe I had it nerve on that - or related matters and its spooks].

Sorry to wax personal; only to say that when the fix is in, be it for someone or against someone...the fix is in ....and almost nothing can be done! Crooked prosecutors and crooked judges [many who are intel-connected and approved] know this cookbook of ploys...and just thumb through until they find one that will 'work' for the 'situation at hand'. Abracadabra! [Problem 'solved'] Justice be damned.

[Ed Jewett]

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[TD]October 5, 2011 -- The all-but-forgotten Allen Stanford trial

The main stream media seems to have all-but-forgotten the trial of one-time multi-billionaire banker Allen Stanford, whose fraud trial in Dallas, Texas is being held in abeyance as Stanford has developed an alleged mental condition of "amnesia" on events prior to his being charged in 2009 with fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Before his exposure as the brains behind a $8 billion Ponzi scheme involving his Antigua-based bank, Stanford International Bank, Ltd., Stanford, who split his time between Houston, Antigua, St. Croix, and Miami, was a major donor to U.S. politicians. He was an honored guest at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver that nominated Barack Obama for president.

It was WMR's coverage of Stanford's financial empire and its ties to the CIA and drig money laundering that resulted in this editor's being lured to Alexandria, Virginia with promised additional information about Stanford's drug money laundering activities in Panama that led to an entrapment arrest in 2009 by the Alexandria police.

With the Stanford fraud case expanding to include "private banking" operations, including those of SG Private Banking (Suisse) SA, a subsidiary of the French banking giant Societé Générale, there have been some odd developments in the trial of the former billionaire banker who was beaten in prison in 2010 and later claimed that pain killers he took while recovering from the assault resulted in amnesia on events before his indictment in 2009. Stanford's auditor, Charles Hewitt, of the one-man band auditor operation of CAS Hewlett & Co. in London, died under suspicious circumstances in 2009.

Freedom of Information Act requests by the Houston Chronicle to the Texas Department of Banking, which issued Stanford a state-chartered trust in 2001, a deal that was agreed to in 2000 while George W. Bush was Texas Governor, and which was formalized after Rick Perry assumed the governorship, have been caught up in a bureaucratic morass, one that appears to be intentional. Stanford's main U.S. branches for his Stanford Financial Group's operations were located in Houston, Memphis, Miami, and, oddly, Tupelo, Mississippi.

Those who were defrauded by Stanford and his enterprises and who have sued the Ponzi scammer are alarmed by a recent e-mail received from U.S. Judge David Godbey, the Stanford trial judge, announcing a status conference at the Dallas federal court house on October 13. Many litigants have expressed their distrust for Godbey in the case.

The list of litigants and their suits against Stanford and associated defendants provides an insight into the complexity and far-reaching effects of the international fraud committed by Stanford and his associates:

Securities and Exchange Commission v. Stanford International Bank Ltd et al
Adams et al v. Stanford Group Company et al
Pre-War Art, Inc. et al v. Stanford Coins & Bullion, Inc. et al
Trustmark National Bank v. HP Financial Services Venezuela, C.C.A. et al
Janvey v. Alguire et al
Troice et al v. Willis of Colorado, Inc. et al
Gonzalez et al v. Ralph S. Janvey et al
Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's London v. Ralph S Janvey
Allen v. Stanford Group Company et al
Ranni v. Willis of Colorado Inc et al
Janvey v. Reeves
Frank et al v. The Commonwealth of Antigua and Barbuda
Kyle v. Stanford International Bank Ltd. et al
Turk et al v. Pershing LLC
Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's London et al v. Stanford et al
In the Matter of the Tax Liabilities of John Does
Rotstain et al v. Trustmark National Bank et al
Queyrouze et al v. Bank of Antigua et al
MacArthur, et al v. Certain Underwriters/Names at Lloyd's of London, et al
Janvey v. Venger et a
Jackson et al v. Cox et al
Janvey v. Rodriguez Posada, et al
Janvey v. Gilbe Corp
Janvey v. Barnes et al
Janvey v. Buck's Bits Service, Inc.
Janvey v. Johnson
Janvey v. Barr
Rupert et al v. Winter
Janvey v. Interim Executive Management, Inc.
Janvey v. Indigo Trust
Janvey v. Fernandez et al
Janvey v. Stoelker
Janvey v. Wieselberg et al
Casanova et al v. Willis of Colorado Inc et al
Kneese et al v. Pershing, LLC
Janvey v. Tonarelli
Janvey v. Dillon Gage Inc. of Dallas et al
Janvey vs. Rodriguez-Tolentino et al
Janvey v. Stanford
Janvey v. Bogar et al
Janvey v. Alvarado
Janvey v. Stinson
Janvey et al v. Toms et al
Janvey et al v. The University of Miami
Janvey et al v. The Inter-American Economic Council
Janvey et al v. IMG Worldwide, Inc.
Janvey et al v. Miami Heat Limited Partnership et al
Ralph S Janvey, et al. v. PGA Tour Inc
Janvey et al v. Allen
Janvey et al v. Arizaga
Janvey et al v. Vingerhoedt et al
-N [unidentified case name and number]
Janvey et al v. Giusti et al
Janvey et al v. The Golf Channel, Inc.
Janvey et al v. ATP Tour Inc
Janvey et al v. Salgar
Janvey et al v. Romero
The Official Stanford Investors Committee v. Cort & Cort et al
Janvey et al v. Castaneda
Janvey et al v. Brown
Janvey et al v. Blackman
The Official Stanford Investors Committee v. American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, Inc. et al
Mendez et al v. Pershing, LLC et al
The Official Stanford Investors Committee et al v. Breazeale Sachse & Wilson LLP et al Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's of London et al v. Tolentino et al
Robert Juan Dartez, LLC et al v. The United States of America
Janvey et al v. Chung Design, LLC.
Janvey v. Insideout Sports & Entertainment
Janvey et al v. Rocketball, Ltd. et al
Trustmark National Bank v. Carribean Sun Airlines, Inc. et al
Official Stanford Investors Committee v. Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Martin, LLP.
Wilkinson et al v. BDO USA, LLP et al
Janvey v. Libyan Investment Authority et al
Janvey v. Stanford
Janvey v. Rincon
Janvey et al v. Texas A&M University
Rishmague et al v. Winter et al

-----

Ralph S. Janvey of the Dallas law firm Krage & Janvey is the court-appointed recevier for Stanford's companies and assets.

It is noteworthy that among those involved as defendants in the Stanford fraud is the Libyan Investment Authority and other associated parties during the leadership of Muammar Qaddafi. Another defendant is the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities and other associated parties. Another defendant is the Inter-American Economic Council, a not-for-profit think tank, which, in 2005, hosted a congressional junket to the Caribbean. Among the participants were Representatives James Clyburn (D-SC), Donald Payne (D-NJ), then-Representative John Sweeney (R-NY), the late Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-OH), Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX), and then-Representative Katherine Harris (R-FL). The Inter-American Economic Council appears to have been nothing more than a tax-free contrivance that organized congressional junkets to the Caribbean and Latin America. The organization's website appears to have been disabled.

The American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities has been the principal fund-raising organization for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. On February 20, 2009, WMR reported: "In 2007, the 'Stanford St. Jude' golf Championship netted the Memphis children's hospital for cancer patients $1.76 million, its largest single donation in 34 years. in 2003, while investigating the suspicious death in Memphis of noted Harvard virologist Dr. Don Wiley, who served on the St. Jude advisory board, this editor was told by an auditor for the hospital that I should look into suspicious money flows into the hospital's financial network by suspicious donors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries."


http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20111004_3


[/TD]
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[Ed Jewett]

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[TD]December 21-22, 2011 -- Amnesia defense and jail for elderly ex-dictator all to protect Bush drug links

publication date: Dec 21, 2011

[/TD]
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[TABLE="width: 798"]
[TR]
[TD]December 21-22, 2011 -- Amnesia defense and jail for elderly ex-dictator all to protect Bush drug links

Sir Allen Stanford, the former Texas and Florida billionaire who owned Antigua-based Stanford International Bank and the global Stanford Financial Group before he was charged with bilking investors out of $7 billion in a Ponzi scheme, is pleading amnesia in his trial in the U.S. District Court in Houston. Stanford claims he does not remember anything before he became hooked on pain killers after he was beaten by another inmate in federal prison.

Meanwhile, ex-Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is sitting in languishing in a Panamanian prison cell, not eligible for house arrest usually afford those who are over 70 years of age. Noriega was transferred from France, where he served a prison sentence for money laundering. Noriega spent 22 years in prison in the United States and France for drug smuggling and money laundering after being arrested by U.S. troops who invaded Panama in 1989. Noriega was captured after being granted asylum in the Vatican Apostolic Nuncio in Panama City, however, President George H. W. Bush, who ordered Operation Nifty Package, the military invasion of Panama and arrest of Noriega, ignored the Vatican chancery's diplomatic status when he ordered U.S. troops to apprehend Noriega on legal Vatican territory.

After several Panamanian banks were cited as laundering money for the Colombian cartels, the drug money launderers began to shy away from Panama. It was about the same time that Allen Stanford, chased from Montserrat after a crack down there on money laundering, moved his operations to Antigua, where he changed the name of his original Montserrat operation, Guardian International Bank, to Stanford International Bank.

CIA sources told WMR that Stanford's Antigua bank began laundering money for the Colombian and Panamanian drug cartels after it was discovered that the regime installed by Bush in Panama, headed by President Guillermo Endara and Vice President Gullermo "Billy" Ford, was deeply involved in drug money laundering using a network of banks in Florida that were, in turn, linked to Jeb Bush, Bush's son and future governor of the state.

Endara was a director of one such bank, First Interamericas Bank. His vice president, Ford, was co-founder of Dadeland Bank in Miami. Endara, a corporate attorney, represented Panamanian corporate tycoon Carlos Eleta, who acted as the go-between for a $10 million transfer from the CIA to the Endara-led opposition against the Noriega-selected presidential candidate in the 1989 election.

Eleta, who was arrested in the United States for drug smuggling, was released with all charges dismissed after Bush ordered the invasion of Panama. The New York Times was a champion for the Bush invasion of Panama and the arrest of Noriega. However, the paper was forced to eat crow when it was forced to run the following headline on June 12, 1990: "A Thin Paper Trail in Noriega Inquiry -- U.S. Finds Few Documents Tying Ex-Leader to Drugs."

The Spanish government asked the Endara regime to helo it investigate over 100 companies in Panama suspected of laundering drug money for Spanish drug syndicate heads. Panama ignored the Spanish request. Endara also ordered his government not to cooperate with a U.S. Senate investigation of a shipment of weapons in 1989 by Israel's Mossad through Panama to the Medellin cartel in Colombia.

Noriega was arrested and imprisoned by the United States and France because of the knowledge he had of the Bush family's ties to CIA drug smuggling involving the two major Colombian cartels -- Cali and Medellin. In fact, the First Interamericas Bank, for whom the U.S.-installed Endara served as a director,was owned by Gilberto Rodrigues Orejuela, the leader of the Cali cartel. The bank also laundered money for Jorge Ochoa of the Medellin cartel. While the United States could never find any documentation linking Noriega to drug money laundering, for which he was sentenced to prison in the United States and France, it had ample evidence of the CIA and Bush connection to the Colombian cartels through the Panamanian and Florida banks. Other CIA banks in Florida that facilitated drug money laundering included Great American Bank of Miami, City National Bank of Miami, and National Bank of Homestead.

In 1982, Vice President Bush headed the presidential task force on drugs. In what could be likened to the fox guarding the hen house, Bush immediately began facilitating the importation of drugs to bolster the CIA's off-the-books slush funds for such operations as arming the Nicaraguan contras, feathering Noriega's nest in Panama, and dealing with the Cali and Medellin cartels. Jeb Bush was the main go-between for the CIA and the Nicaraguan contras who were funded with drug proceeds from key Cuban-Americans in Florida. A few military officers assigned to Bush's White House drug task force resigned in disgust when they discovered the true nature of Bush's drug running operations.

Two people alive today are intimately familiar with the Bush family's links to CIA drug smuggling, however, Stanford says he has amnesia and 77-year old Noriega is sitting in a Panamanian military prison unable to tell his side of the story to the world.

President Obama is comfortable with the status quo. Stanford was a major contributor to his 2008 presidential campaign, while Noriega may have some information on one suspected CIA drug money launderer, Donald Beazley, the president of one of the CIA-and Jeb Bush-linked banks in Florida, Colombian-owned City National Bank of Miami. The bank ultimately collapsed in a major fraud scheme. Beazley was also a principal officer of the CIA's drug money laundering Nugan Hand Bank based in Australia. Coincidentally, Madelyn Dunham, a vice president for the Bank of Hawaii for escrow accounts and hush-hush CIA payments to America's favorite Asian dictators, was aware of the Nugan Hand pay-offs and dubious other transactions. Dunham's grandson is Barack Obama.






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http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20111221

[Jan Klimkowski]

President Obama is comfortable with the status quo. Stanford was a major contributor to his 2008 presidential campaign, while Noriega may have some information on one suspected CIA drug money launderer, Donald Beazley, the president of one of the CIA-and Jeb Bush-linked banks in Florida, Colombian-owned City National Bank of Miami. The bank ultimately collapsed in a major fraud scheme. Beazley was also a principal officer of the CIA's drug money laundering Nugan Hand Bank based in Australia. Coincidentally, Madelyn Dunham, a vice president for the Bank of Hawaii for escrow accounts and hush-hush CIA payments to America's favorite Asian dictators, was aware of the Nugan Hand pay-offs and dubious other transactions. Dunham's grandson is Barack Obama.

Change only a braindead fool would believe in.....

[Magda Hassan]

President Obama is comfortable with the status quo. Stanford was a major contributor to his 2008 presidential campaign, while Noriega may have some information on one suspected CIA drug money launderer, Donald Beazley, the president of one of the CIA-and Jeb Bush-linked banks in Florida, Colombian-owned City National Bank of Miami. The bank ultimately collapsed in a major fraud scheme. Beazley was also a principal officer of the CIA's drug money laundering Nugan Hand Bank based in Australia. Coincidentally, Madelyn Dunham, a vice president for the Bank of Hawaii for escrow accounts and hush-hush CIA payments to America's favorite Asian dictators, was aware of the Nugan Hand pay-offs and dubious other transactions. Dunham's grandson is Barack Obama.

Change only a braindead fool would believe in.....

Much of the Nugan Hand apparatus after Australia outlived its usefulness as a base of operations it seemed to appear in .....Hawaii

[Magda Hassan]

Allen Stanford, American Drug Lord

Posted on March 21, 2012 by dhopsicker

Missing from coverage of the conviction two weeks ago of Texas "financier" Allen Stanford for running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme was any mention of Stanford's long-time role as an authenticif no longer certifiedAmerican Drug Lord.
"Sir" Allen (the title was bought) is an excellent example of a curiously under-publicized species: the American Drug Lord. (The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration claims the species doesn't even exist; it may be they have their own reasons.)
To most observers in the Caribbean, however, Stanford's narco-bank was as visible a manifestation of the global drug trade as a homemade semi-submersible submarine, or a convoy of SUV's snaking through Sinaloa's Sierra Madre Mountains.
Banks like his immodestly-named Stanford International Bank on the island of Antigua, where financial regulators are apparently even more easily-corrupted than their counterparts in the U.S., are as essential to global drug trafficking as fleets of late-model, preferably American-registered luxury jets.
"Every island has one," one veteran Caribbean observer told us from Kingston Jamaica, referring to Stanford's bank. "The days are mostly gone when you could walk in and lay out three suitcases of cash and get a penthouse condo on Miami Beach."
"You can't spend money you haven't first deposited in a bank these days."

It's the little things

Conspicuously missing at Stanford's trial were answers to questions widely being asked, especially in the Caribbean, where many lost their life savings, about Stanford's relationship with the CIA.

Was Stanford's bank in Antigua just the latest in a long line of money-laundering bankslike Castle Bank, Nugan Hand, and Wachoviaused to move money around by the CIA and organized crime?
One telling detail: when Stanford's fellow Ponzi All-Star Art Nadel (of Huffman Aviation in Venice Florida fame) went on the lam, he lit out for Slidell, Louisiana, the legendary site of Carlos Marcello's hunting lodge just outside New Orleans.
After Stanford went on the lam he was found in Fredericksburg, Virginia, just over the hill from "The Farm," the training facility of one of the U.S. Government's most famous three-letter agencies at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico.

White kid gloves only, please

The kid-glove treatment accorded two of Stanford's accomplices is another clue to Stanford's provenance. Without their help, say observers, Stanford's operation would have been shut down as much as a decade earlier.
Both were high-level U.S. Federal Agency employees, one in the DEA, the other in the SEC, America's Securities Exchange Commission, charged with preventing financial fraud.
Neither Agency has exactly covered itself in glory in living memory.
In the $3 trillion financial heist in 2008, the SEC, unfortunately, got there a little late…

And in the now 40-year old War on Drugs, the DEA cannot be said to be "shock and awe-ing" the global drug trade into anything like submission.
In the aftermath of Stanford's arrest, the two former high-level Federal employees fared pretty well. One, deeply and criminally implicated by numerous sources, paid just a $50,000 fine, and never even faced criminal charges.
And when the second one did face criminal charges, a miracle occurred.

The 'Immaculate Acquittal'

It's morning in Miami. Tuesday the 10[SUP]th[/SUP] of February, 2010. Inside the Federal Courthouse downtown something extremely rare is about to take place: a miracle, at least the closest thing to a miracle veteran court-watchers have seen in a long time.
It comes at the end of the trial of Thomas Raffanello, Allen Stanford's Chief of Security, and the long-time chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Miami office. Before joining Stanford, Raffanello led investigations against Manuel Noriega and the Medellin Cartel.
There has long been speculation about Stanford's connections with the world of "los narcos." But Raffanello is the one verifiable link between Allen Stanford and the global drug trade.
Raffanello, accused of illegally shredding documents at Stanford Financial Group after Stanford's arrest, was taken to a Fort Lauderdale federal courtroom in shackles, facing charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and destroying records.

But he had committed no crime, his lawyers said in a court filing. He was simply taking out the garbage.'

On the morning of February 10, 2010, Raffanello sat in court awaiting the jury's verdict as the jury asked for clarification on one of the charges. Then, after they retired to continue their deliberations, Judge Richard Goldberg ordered the charges dismissed.

Lawyers called the ruling extremely rare, almost unprecedented. "Something smells here," said one courtroom observer afterwards.
It was the Immaculate Acquittal.
"Judges always wait for the jury to finish deliberations. If the jury finds the defendant not guilty, case closed. If they find him guilty, the judge has the power to over turn the conviction. But in that case the judge proclaims, Judgment notwithstanding the verdict.'"
"We witnessed a miracle," said one of Raffanello's defense attorneys, Janice Burton Sharpstein.

It's a small world, after all

Sharpstein is married to Richard Sharpstein, a Miami attorney who represented one of the trigger men in the assassination of Barry Seal in Baton Rouge Louisiana in 1986.
We interviewed him while researching "Barry & the Boys." But the story he told us speaks volumes about the world of Allen Stanford.
"Why was Barry Seal murdered?" we asked.
"Seal had been irate when the IRS seized all his property," Sharstein related. "The IRS man said to Seal, You owe us $30 million for the money you made drug smuggling."


"Hey, I work for you," was Seal's reply. "We both work for the same people."
"You don't work for us," the IRS agent replied. "We're the IRS."
"Then Unglesby (Seal's attorney) watched as Seal place a call to (then-Vice President) George Bush," Sharpstein stated.
"He heard Barry say, If you don't get these assholes off my back I'm going to blow the whistle on the Contra scheme."

"What Unglesby says is, 'That's why he's dead.'

Allen Stanford isn't dead. But he pissed somebody off bad enough to make him wish he were.

TOMORROW: ALLEN STANFORD II: WACKENHUT, STIGMATA, & THE NATURE OF CRICKET

http://www.madcowprod.com/2012/03/21/all...drug-lord/

[Ed Jewett]

Stanford gets 110 years in "epic" fraud

By Ronnie Crocker

Published 09:16 p.m., Thursday, June 14, 2012

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  Stanford delivers an unrepentant statement at his sentencing before U.S. District Judge David Hittner. Photo: Ken Ellis / HC

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After three years of denial, a vigorously contested trial that lasted six weeks and Thursday's unrepentant speech before a judge and a courtroom filled with aggrieved investors, R. Allen Stanford offered an apology of sorts to a victim of his multibillion-dollar fraud.
"He had tears in his eyes and said, 'I'm so sorry,'" saidAngela Shaw, one of the thousands of investors who lost billions of dollars in worthless certificates of deposit. "But then he said, 'This is wrong and you'll have to sue the United States government. They did this.'"
The brief, face-to-face encounter occurred as the courtroom began to empty after the 62-year-old Mexia native was sentenced to 110 years in prison - a life term, barring a successful appeal. For Shaw, it confirmed her view of Stanford's "sociopathic behavior."
The proceedings were notable for other theatrical flourishes.
A couple of hundred onlookers packed the federal courtroom as U.S. District Judge David Hittner called the sentencing hearing to order shortly after 10 a.m. At one point, Shaw, addressing the court, asked if it would be OK for the fraud victims in attendance to stand.
Fully half the crowd rose in silent rebuke.
In March, a jury found that Stanford ensnared thousands of investors around the globe through a fraud centered at his Stanford International Bank on the Caribbean island of Antigua.
During Thursday's hearing, Stanford lawyer Ali Fazelset a combative tone by accusing prosecutors of misleading the public in describing the Stanford case as a "Ponzi scheme" - one that pays early investors with funds raised from later ones rather than from actual investments.
"The government insists on calling this a Ponzi scheme because it sounds sexy for the media," Fazel said.
Rather, he told Hittner, returning to themes debated during the trial that concluded in March, Stanford made actual investments in myriad businesses and could have covered the CD balances if not for the heavy-handed intervention of federal regulators.
Comparisons to Madoff
He also suggested that Stanford is being unfairly punished because of the backlash that followedBernard Madoff's historic Ponzi scheme. Madoff pleaded guilty three years ago and is serving a 150-year prison sentence.
Fazel asked Hittner to consider a term of no more than 10 years for his client.
Prosecutor William Stellmach punched back by painting Stanford as a remorseless predator of the middle class whose crimes are "unparalleled, even compared to Madoff." He said that Madoff kept about $250 million for himself and his family over the last 10 years of his scheme.
By comparison, Stellmach said, Stanford kept $2 billion for personal use.
But the highest drama came when Stanford, graying and paunchy in dark green prison togs, rose, at Hittner's offer, with a fistful of papers, to speak on his own behalf.
"I worked tirelessly, and honestly, to build a world-class, global financial-services company," he said, then repeatedly laid the blame for its collapse on the U.S. government.
Receivers, he said, moved too quickly in February 2009 to close down his businesses and unload his assets in a "fire sale." If allowed to continue to operate, he said, his enterprises would have recovered from the recession and he would have been able to repay holders of the CDs.
Prosecutors have estimated the size of the fraud at $5.9 billion - $7.2 billion on the books at the time it was uncovered, less $1.3 billion in "fictitious interest" on the CDs.
As he has since the federal authorities moved against him, Stanford denied any wrongdoing in the complex web. He described himself as "an easy target," a Texan with a colorful, outsized personality at a time of worldwide economic collapse.
"Whether I'm a scapegoat or whether I just became the thing used to deflect, I don't know," said Stanford.
Twice, he mentioned that he felt bad for the investors who lost money, his employees who lost their jobs and his own family members dragged into the affair.
But, he concluded, "I am and will always be at peace with the way I conducted myself in business."
Liable for $5.9 billion
Stellmach blasted the speech as "obscene" and urged Hittner to assess the 230-year maximum sentence.
A few minutes later, when the judge announced the aggregate total for the 13 counts on which Stanford was convicted - conspiracy, wire and mail fraud, obstruction and money laundering - the sentence ran to 110 years.
Stanford took a sip of water and drew a deep breath as Hittner noted that it is unlikely the prisoner ever will be released.
The judge also approved a "money judgment" that holds Stanford personally liable for $5.9 billion.
Jaime Escalona, a defrauded investor who lives in Caracas, Venezuela, and Austin and advocates for mostly Latin American investors, had called for the maximum during the hearing. From his dais in the courtroom, he called Stanford "a dirty, rotten scoundrel."
Afterward, he said he was glad, at least, that Stanford probably will never be free.
"We were hoping for the maximum," he said, "to make an example."

ronnie.crocker@chron.com twitter.com/rcrocker

http://www.chron.com/business/article/St...635716.php