Ralph Janvey, court-appointed receiver helping former clients of convicted
Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, is facing opposition to a request for a
pay raise from those clients.
Janvey and his team of professionals have been paid more than $45 million
since they were appointed to oversee Stanford's assets, which were seized by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February 2009, according to a filing March 30 in federal court in Dallas.
Janvey filed a court request this month for a 10 per cent boost in his
hourly rate and a 10 per cent reduction in the amount the Dallas judge
presiding over Stanford's civil case has ordered held back from the
receivership's billings. The amount held back is $14 million, according to
the filing.
"During this same time, the investor victims have not recovered a single
penny, as there have been no distributions," lawyers for the investors'
committee said in the March 30 filing. "Given the current state of this
receivership, they cannot agree to giving the receiver's professionals what
is widely perceived within the investor community as a 'raise.'"
Stanford, 62, was convicted on March 6 of 13 criminal counts tied to
allegations he defrauded investors through the sale of bogus certificates of deposit at his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank. He faces more than 20 years in prison when he's sentenced on June 14.
Kevin Sadler, Janvey's lawyer, urged U.S. District Judge David Godbey in
Dallas in a March 9 filing to grant the pay increase on the grounds the
receiver's team has been working at below-market rates and hasn't had a
raise in three years. He also claimed that receivers for equally high-profile fraud cases are getting significantly higher pay for similar
work.
The trustee working to compensate victims defrauded by New York financier
Bernard Madoff is charging $765 an hour while his lead lawyers receive $750
to $850 an hour, Sadler said in the Janvey fee-request filing.
In contrast, Janvey said he's receiving just $272 an hour and his lead
lawyers are paid $365 to $444 an hour, after discounts and holdbacks ordered by the judge in the Stanford case are factored in, according to the filing.
The SEC and a court-appointed examiner who represents investors in the case
both oppose raising the hourly pay rate for the receivership team, according to Janvey's filing. The regulators and the examiner agree the holdback should be dialled back to 10 per cent from the current 20 per cent, according to the filing.
As of Oct. 31, Janvey's most recent accounting of the Stanford
receivership's assets, the estate had total cash on hand of $114.5 million
That dam committee and everybody on it should burn in hell for the way they have behaved. Godbey should be ashamed of himself putting together a committee that doesn't have a single real victim on it.
ReplyDeleteThey all have their own agendas and unfortunately for us the victims are not part of that agenda.