Dear Clients:
As most of you know, last Friday, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission released a Report of Investigation by its Office of the Inspector General concerning the SEC’s failures in the Stanford matter. The Report’s conclusions are truly shocking. As detailed in the report, the SEC knew for many years that Allen Stanford was almost certainly operating a Ponzi scheme, but did nothing to stop it. Between the time that the SEC first reached its conclusion that Stanford’s operation was a fraud, and the time that it started an enforcement action against Stanford in 2009, investors poured billions of dollars into Stanford International Bank.
There is no doubt that the SEC failed to carry out its responsibilities to regulate Stanford, and many of you have asked if and when we are going to sue the SEC for your losses. You should know that we are continuing to investigate every possible avenue for recovery on your behalf, including a suit against the SEC. Significantly, the United States government generally has the benefit of “sovereign immunity,” which poses significant obstacles to successfully prosecuting an action against it on behalf of victims of financial fraud. The sovereign immunity defense makes it very difficult to bring any case against the government for failing to stop a crime – including a financial fraud. There are also procedural hurdles that would need to be overcome, including the requirement that every person who sues the SEC must first file an administrative claim with the agency in his or her own name, and not by means of a class action. While these hurdles are significant, we are continuing to analyze the viability of such a lawsuit, and will continue to explore ways to use the new Report from the Office of the Inspector General to our advantage.
Please know that we are continuing to pursue every possible avenue of recovery for our clients, and that we will aggressively fight to recover every dollar we can on your behalf.
A full copy of the SEC Report is available on our website.
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The website is: http://mbstanford.typepad.com/clientinformation/
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