Stanford moved from Houston prison

Accused fraud mastermind R. Allen Stanford, ruled incompetent to stand trial because of addiction to drugs he’s received while in federal custody, is being moved from Houston to a different detention facility.

Traci Billingsley, spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, confirmed that Stanford has left the federal detention center in downtown Houston. She said the bureau does not disclose where inmates are going, and would not say whether Stanford is going to a drug treatment facility.

U.S. District Judge David Hittner ruled after a hearing in January that Stanford is incompetent to stand trial and must undergo detoxification from addictions to medications prescribed for anxiety and depression. A brain injury Stanford suffered in a 2009 altercation with another inmate also may have diminished his capacity to assist in his defense, the judge wrote, citing expert testimony in the hearing.

Stanford and other officers of his Houston-based Stanford Financial Group are accused of defrauding investors of $7 billion in a scheme based largely on certificates of deposit issued by a Stanford-owned bank on the Caribbean island of Antigua.

Stanford has been in federal custody as a potential flight risk since his arrest in June 2009. The other defendants are free on bail.

Sir Allen Stanford moved to another prison after a brawl

The renegade financier Sir Allen Stanford, awaiting trial in Texas on $7bn (£4.4bn) fraud charges, is being moved to a different jail by US authorities after he suffered two black eyes, a broken nose and concussion in a fracas with a fellow inmate. Stanford, who bankrolled Twenty20 cricket tournaments, had complained repeatedly about conditions at the Joe Corley Detention Centre, a private facility in the town of Conroe where he shared a cell with ten others. After representations by lawyers, a judge ordered authorities to move him to a federal detention centre in central Houston, saying this will make it easier for the former billionaire to meet with counsel in preparation for his trial Stanford's lawyer, Kent Schaffer, said the only way to communicate with Stanford had been to hold up documents to a window and shout through two-inch thick glass. Schaffer gave few details of the fight in which Stanford was injured, other than to say: "The reality is violence happens in any jail."