Allen Stanford Fallout: Mexican Drugs, Bad Reportage and Geoffrey Boycott

Allen Stanford, the fraudulent cricket-loving Texan billionaire (I know, it sounds like the product of bad acid), has gone AWOL, while Antigua is having its own Northern Rock moment as hundreds of Stanford-related account holders rush to withdraw their funds.

Stanford was last seen trying to hire a private jet, but he was declined as he had to use a wire transfer rather than his proffered credit card. Using a rented plane rather than one from your own fleet to try and avoid the feds – not only has he been getting ‘tache tips from Magnum PI, now he’s stealing their storylines! Though maybe he should have taken his plane, the one with the documents linking him to Mexican drug-running lying on the seats, could have killed two birds with one stone. Now the FBI have found that extra bit of incrimination, it really doesn’t look good for Stanny when they finally catch up with him. I’m betting he’s got a base hollowed out in Antigua’s highest mountain, the newly christened “Mount Obama”.

So while Stanford lies low, Antigua has gone mental at the prospect of its biggest private employer going out of business. Despite giving assurances that the banks had enough reserves, people can’t have been heartened by Antiguan prime minister Baldwin Spencer’s words that the case would have a “catastrophic” effect on the country, and so there have been queues around the block to withdraw cash.

Cue one of those awful “I’m stood here” pieces from Stephen Brenkley in the Independent: “They were dressed in summer clothes. The sun was beating down but the palm trees dimmed its heat. Nothing, however, could disguise the frightened mood of the people. Outside the Bank of Antigua yesterday, the overwhelming fear was that hell had come to paradise.” Ooh, it’s just like reading a novel!

While print media continues to print this journo-jism, Felix Salmon in Portfolio suggests that the blogosphere is the reason why Stanford got taken down – the highlighting by blogs of the original Venezuelan magazine article that questioned his investment portfolio brought it to global attention, while print media was too scared of litigation to write anything with the word “fraud” in it. He concludes: “Markopolos really would have been much better off blogging his suspicions about Bernie Madoff than going to the WSJ”. 

But if you’ve actually got investments in Stanford International Bank, the target of the SEC investigation, you’re not going to be getting that back for a while. Those affected include some of the West Indies cricket team, who were encouraged to put back some of the $1m they won from the Twenty20 Superstars match Stanford organised back into his investment bank. The names of those who took him up on the offer haven’t been released, but apparently at least two of them are playing England right now (and getting beat). Perma-boy Michael Owen has been hit by the scandal too – according to the Daily Mail, he’s a global brand ambassador for the bank, and is “thought to have” money invested in it. Whether that’s the Mail just putting two and two together or he actually does have investments, it isn’t clear, but he probably should have stuck to promoting breakfast cereal all the same. 

We’ve been waiting for old-school cricketing firebrand and lothario Geoffrey Boycott to wade into the scandal with all the disregard for easy soundbites that makes Boycott On Cricket one of the funniest sports books ever written, and so it has come to pass. “Everyone can surely agree that the tacky, vulgar circus that unfolded in Antigua last November was an embarrassment for the game”, spake Boycott in – where else? – The Telegraph. “We cannot keep on treating sport as a business along the lines of Marks and Spencer, or Tesco.” Or any other shop! We love you Geoff.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | February 19, 2009 12:30PM |