By Suzi Ring - legalweek.com
LG has won a high-profile role to advise the newly-appointed liquidators of Stanford International Bank (SIB) following its 2009 collapse amid a billion-dollar
fraud scandal.
The UK law firm is acting for accountancy firm Grant Thornton, which was appointed to handle the liquidation in May after former liquidator Vantis was removed in June last year.
SIB founder Allen Stanford (pictured) is currently in prison awaiting trial after being charged in 2009 with defrauding investors with a $7bn (£4.3bn) Ponzi scheme run out of the bank.
LG is advising on all UK matters concerning SIB’s assets in London, including the $110m (£68m) of assets currently restrained by the Serious Fraud Office on behalf of the US Department of Justice.
LG senior partner Andrew Witts said: “We are delighted to be retained by Grant Thornton in this matter. It is clearly an important case, which raises potentially interesting issues of law on priority over the SIB assets in London, which are currently the subject of a restraint order.”
SIB collapsed in 2009 after Stanford, Stanford Financial Group chief financial officer James Davis and chief investment officer Laura Pendergest-Holt were subject to fraud charges relating to an alleged Ponzi scheme thought to have affected tens of thousands of depositors worldwide.
Vantis, which was formerly advised by CMS Cameron McKenna, was removed as the liquidator of SIB last year by an Antiguan court before later going into administration.
Now that a legitimate firm, independent of Antigua's government has been appointed, the US receivership should wrap things up and give any recovered assets and acquired information to GT. Having two legitimate receivers is inefficient, and from what we now know the problem of missing funds is entirely confined to the Antiguan chartered bank, not the US broker/dealer.
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