Stanford group finance officer admits huge fraud
Stanford group finance officer admits huge fraud
(AFP) – 4 days ago
WASHINGTON — The chief financial officer of the investment company owned by Texas cricket mogul Allen Stanford Thursday pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a complex seven-billion-dollar fraud.
James Davis, 60, the former chief financial officer of Houston-based Stanford Financial Group, pleaded guilty to fraud and obstruction charges, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
Davis admitted he and his co-conspirators defrauded investors who bought about seven billion dollars in certificates of deposit administered by the Antigua-based Stanford International Bank.
He admitted the scam dated back to 1990 when he and his co-conspirators began making false entries into the bank's ledgers about its revenues and revenue balances, the DOJ said.
Stanford, 59, a flamboyant Texan billionaire who sought to revolutionize the world of cricket, pleaded not guilty in June to 21 charges of fraud, money-laundering and obstruction.
He is being held without bail in a jail near Houston, Texas, awaiting trial, and officials said Thursday he had been hospitalized. Attorney Robert Luskin said the disgraced financier was suffering a "heart condition of some kind."
Davis admitted Thursday the team misappropriated most of the bank's investor assets, including by diverting more than 1.6 billion dollars into undisclosed personal loans to a co-conspirator, the Justice Department added.
Despite this, Davis and his co-conspirators claimed the bank's investments were "well-managed, safe and secure," boasting to investors that its earnings and assets were increasingly annually.
The company's chief investment officer Laura Pendergest-Holt has pleaded not guilty to charges arising out of the affair including fraud and conspiracy to commit money-laundering.
The Department of Justice has also charged accountants Mark Kuhrt and Gilberto Lopez, who worked for Stanford-affiliated companies, and Leroy King, head of Antigua's financial services regulatory commission.
Stanford's case is the most high-profile alleged scam since Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff was charged in a 50-billion-dollar pyramid scheme in December.
Madoff, 71, is now serving a 150-year sentence for cheating thousands of people and institutions, including celebrities, charities and leading banks, over several decades.
Stanford was the man behind the eponymous Stanford Super Series Twenty20 cricket competition, which culminated with his team of hand-picked Caribbean Superstars last year defeating England at his own ground on the Caribbean island state of Antigua and Barbuda.
He had become a larger than life figure in Antigua, where his company was the largest employer and where he was even knighted in 2006 by the Caribbean island nation's governor-general.
The England and Wales Cricket Board cut ties with him after the allegations surfaced. No date has yet been set for his trial, but he faces up to 375 years in jail if convicte
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