How R. Allen Stanford Bribed Congress

Source:The Judiciary Report


An insightful article in the Miami New Times explored the bribery aspect of the R. Allen Stanford case. It also serves to confirm what I have stated all along, bribery is a way of life for many in the corporate world. I saw that firsthand in the Madonna case, which coincidentally happened in Miami as well, much like many elements of the Stanford case.


The R. Allen Stanford ponzi case reveals how astonishingly easy it is to bribe Congress. The FBI and SEC knew of Stanford's misconduct since the 90's and did nothing. Why? Stanford gave $5,000,000 to various Republicans and Democrats in Congress to kill a bill introduced by former president Bill Clinton A/K/A "Bubba" that would have shut fraudsters like him down. The bill was called the Financial Services Antifraud Network Act.



After the donations to Congress people, said bill addressing bank fraud was mysteriously killed in the Senate. Had it passed, Stanford's goose most likely would have been cooked.

Another thing that disgusts me about the Stanford case, is how he corrupted the judicial and arbitrary system, using his looted ponzi money, to buy influence with judges, in terrible bids at silencing employees that began blowing the whistle several years ago.


Charles Hazlett, former Stanford employee that was defrauded in court, should sue him again

Said American employees that left in separate cases several years ago or were terminated when they figured out he was running a ponzi scheme, legally tried to receive their pay and all that was owed to them, but due to corruption by Stanford, were slapped with $150,000 to $200,000 in legal fees for daring to file a claim and speak out about his wrongdoing.

Said judges and arbitrators should be brought up on fraud charges, as these people made serious, credible allegations that were 100% true and had you heeded the warnings, instead of fawningly bowing to corruption, investors all over the world wouldn't be out $8 billion dollars and America's name in the financial world would not have sustained another terrible blackeye.



Madoff, Stanford and other greedy, corrupt titans in the corporate sector, killed the American dream for many. They also killed free trade, with this crooked redistribution of wealth.

These men and women are not successes. They are thieves, frauds, crooks and liars, who should have gotten real jobs instead of stealing from everyone else who actually has one.

Success in the corporate arena is when you build a company from the ground up that provides a true service - such as American Airlines (air travel), Apple (computers), Macy's (clothes and housewares) and Marie Callender's (food) to name a few.

Stealing everyone's money under false pretenses, so you can live a lavish lifestyle makes you a failure and a fraud.

The Fall of a Titan

Even more than Bernie Madoff's tale, Allen Stanford's rise and fall is the story of the past decade in America, where greed mixed with cynical politics birthed a perfect storm for accused hucksters such as Stanford to bring the global economy to its knees. And as Stanford's story shows, the warning signs were there. They were simply ignored...

In 1999, a DEA investigation found that members of the vicious Juárez Cartel in Mexico had deposited more than $3 million in Stanford's bank to launder drug money. Stanford quickly surrendered the cartel's money to the DEA and earned praise from the agency for his quick action. But later that year, federal regulators placed Antigua on a blacklist of nations suspected of money laundering and fraud.

That same year, the Clinton administration introduced a bill to crack down on overseas banks favored by gambling rings, drug militias, and terrorists. Two months later, according to a study by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, Stanford hired a powerhouse lobbying group to fight the bill and began donating to both major parties. He handed out $208,000 to Republican campaign committees and $145,000 to Democrats that year. Among his biggest recipients were powerful Texas lawmakers, including House Democratic Caucus Chair Martin Frost. The bill, despite passing a House committee 31-1 with strong Treasury Department backing, was allowed to die in a Senate committee.

In 2002, as Congress took up a bill called the Financial Services Antifraud Network Act, which would have strengthened U.S. regulators, Stanford upped his lobbying. That year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics — a nonprofit group that monitors campaign money — Stanford's company gave $800,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — the vice chairman of which was Florida's own Sen. Bill Nelson. The senator received more of Stanford's cash than any other member of Congress, according to one study, with $45,900 donated to his campaign. Stanford, in fact, personally hosted a fundraising event for Nelson in Florida. The anti-money-laundering bill died in a Senate committee ...

In all, Stanford spent nearly $5 million lobbying Congress between 1999 and 2008 and dished out $2.4 million to federal candidates. He also sponsored dozens of free, "fact-finding" trips to Antigua and other Caribbean islands for politicians and their staffs on his fleet of jets. Records of the trips show that former Florida Rep. Katherine Harris took one such jaunt to Saint John's. Disgraced Texas Republican Tom DeLay flew 11 times on Stanford's jets, according to the Dallas Morning News...

Like Hazlett's, Basagoitia's claims were summarily dismissed, and both brokers were left to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay and attorney's fees to Stanford. Neither ever heard from the SEC regarding their accusations. And if their voices weren't loud enough for regulators, another Miami employee took his suspicions to court in 2006 and laid out in even greater detail Sir Allen's schemes....

In the filings, De Maria said he told his immediate boss in 2004 he suspected the firm was laundering South American drug money, lying to investors, running a gigantic Ponzi scheme, and paying off Antiguan and American politicians to look the other way. The company settled De Maria's case almost immediately after his lawyers got a court order that would have forced Allen Stanford to testify...

The regulatory board that heard Hazlett's and Basagoitia's testimony is sanctioned directly by the SEC, and De Maria publicly made his claims in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. Yet the wing of the government charged with rooting out bank and investment fraud did not respond to the concerns piling up around Sir Allen's operations..

Bush's ambassador to eastern Caribbean protected Stanford operations

August , 2010 -- Bush's ambassador to eastern Caribbean protected Stanford operations

Antigua became the favorite playground for CIA money laundering during Bush administrations...

http://www.voltairenet.org/article166496.html

http://chagataikhan.blogspot.com/2008/10/afghan-pipeline-by-steve-galster-2.html

Mary K. Ourisman, the Texas-born socialite wife of Maryland car dealer Mandy Ourisman, helped provide diplomatic and legal cover for jailed former Stanford International Bank chief Allen Stanford, according to Stanford insiders who spoke to us. Mary Ourisman was George W. Bush's ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean States, which include Antigua and Barbuda, the headquarters for Stanford's one-time global banking and financial services empire that collapsed in 2009 after it was discovered to be a Ponzi scheme.... Stanford is in prison in Texas and has been refused bail as a flight risk -- Stanford is also a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda. He is scheduled to go on trial in January 2011, conveniently two months after the congressional election in November. Stanford's campaign contributions fell into the coffers of congressional members of both Democrats and Republicans.

However, as we previously reported, Stanford International Bank, Bank Al-Madina in Lebanon and Billions of syphoned monies from the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, also became a replacement for the collapsed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) as a vehicle for drug money laundering and other covert operations on behalf of the CIA and other intelligence agencies....

Mary Ourisman, a political fundraiser for Bush and other GOP candidates and a close friend of former First Lady Laura Bush, became U.S. ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean States in 2006. In her job, Ourisman ensured that Stanford's financial operations in Antigua and Barbuda, as well as in two other Caribbean nations where she was credentialed as ambassador, St. Kitts-Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, were protected from federal regulators.

To provide even more protection for Stanford's money laundering and other covert operations, Stanford showered GOP and Democratic senators with large campaign contributions, including $83,000 for John Cornyn of Texas and $950,000 for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and particularly, Bob Menendez of New Jersey. Menendez, who maintains close connections to the Cuban exile community in Florida and new Jersey and its CIA/MOSSAD veteran operatives, has refused to investigate the Stanford fraud on behalf of its victims and has tried to block any Senate investigation of Stanford's links to the CIA/MOSSAD and top government officials, Democratic and Republican.

It is also noteworthy that Texas was the only U.S. state to have entered into a financial regulatory agreement with Antigua. The Texas Department Banking and the Antigua and Barbuda International Financial Sector Regulatory authority signed the agreement on July 26, 2001. More amazingly, the agreement was signed while Antigua was subject to a U.S. Treasury advisory warning of potential fraud.

Ourisman sat idly in Bridgetown, Barbados as Antigua's Attorney General, Errol Cort, who had also been Stanford's personal attorney on the island, changed the island nation's money laundering laws to the benefit of Stanford and his CIA/MOSSAD overseers, without a peep from any of the regulatory agencies in Washington. Cort, who is now the National Security Minister of Antigua and has used his position to make things uncomfortable for Stanford fraud investigators traveling to the island, also served on the board of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, which took over Stanford's Bank of Antigua after Stanford empire collapsed in 2009. Stanford had become a political kingpin in Antigua, exercising influence over the previous Lester Bird government and its successor, the present Baldwin Spencer government -- without any interference from Ourisman in Barbados or the State Department of stooges of CIA....

Even today, Antigua's ambassador to the United States, Debra-Mae Lovell, the wife of Antigua's corruption-tainted Finance Minister Harold Lovell, spends most of her time in Washington acting as a public relations flack for Antigua and ridiculing the former Stanford investors who were defrauded by the Ponzi scheme -- a scheme facilitated by a corrupt Antiguan government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, more concerned about the continuation of U.S. military basing rights on Antigua, has warmly embraced Ambassador Lovell and members of her government and has lavished hundreds of millions of dollars of aid on Antigua.

The bodies have piled up among those who were most familiar with Stanford's operations. On February 25, 2009, we reported, "No one will ever know just how Charlesworth Shelley Hewlett, who ran CAS Hewlett & Company out of a small office sandwiched between fish and chips shops on South Bury Road in Enfield in north London, came to be the accountant for Allen Stanford's $50 billion financial empire that included Stanford International Bank (SIB). That is because Mr. Hewlett, known as a quiet gray-haired man to those who had offices in his north London office block, died 'peacefully'...with help from CIA goons, a few weeks before the Stanford scandal hit the front pages. Hewlett was 73 but no one knows the reason for Hewlett's death." Hewlett also maintained an office on St. John's Street, in St. John's, the capital of Antigua.

Stogniew, who headed a one-man company in Florida, Stogniew and Associates, provided risk analysis services for Stanford. Stogniew produced a flimsy three-page risk analysis report for Stanford in 2003. It mostly consisted of disclaimers. Gerry Stogniew, who founded his company in 1980 and resided in Seminole, Florida, died in July 2008.... The firm was taken over by Stogniew's daughter and CIA.... Oddly, the professional staff for Stogniew and Associates are only listed by their initials. Federal Election Commission records indicate Stogniew donated to the campaigns of George H. W. Bush in 1987 and Florida Republicans Bill McCollum in 1999 and Katherine Harris in 2005.

Allen Stanford and Mary Ourisman shared more than an interest in protecting Stanford International Bank from nosy regulators: they were both born in the small Texas town of Mexia, Ourisman in 1946 and Stanford in 1950. The town's other "famous" celebrity: the late Anna Nicole Smith, who died from a suspected lethal drug overdose in Hollywood, Florida in 2007.....

Stanford Political Contributions Trickle Back In

Sir Allen Stanford during his heyday, splashed out at least $5 million on lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions to several U.S. lawmakers. But so far, only $87,800 of that contribution has been returned.

Stanford gave $95,000 alone to the 527 groups of then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, then-House Democratic Caucus Chairman Martin Frost, and then-Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott ($5,000). Stanford also gave an additional $100,000 to the Bush Inaugural Committee - as the new administration prepared its own money laundering strategy. He also donated thousands to the Republican National Committee.

DeLay was among the largest recipients of Stanford's largesse. DeLay's committees paid for flights on Stanford's jets at least 16 times since 2003, including on Oct. 20, the day the former House majority leader was booked in a Houston courthouse on money-laundering charges,` according to Bloomberg News.

But so far a listing of funds returned as disclosed by receiver Ralph Janvey, shows that Senator Chris Dodd was among the biggest returnees of funds.

He returned over $27,000 received by `Friends For Chris Dodd,` and `Chris Dodd For President.`

The second largest returnee was ` Shelby for US Senate,` at $14,000 and Friends of Jay Rockefeller and Friends of John Boehner, at $5,000 each.

Stanford, accused by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of a multi-billion fraud, continued to give money to scores of members of Congress, as well as the Obama presidential campaign. He is now awaiting trial in a Texas jail as the receiver tries to obtain all monies spent in order to somehow pay back investors allegedly scammed.