Allen Stanford Case Gets Weirder With Libya Link
The Allen Stanford saga just gets better and better. The orange cricket fan was good comedy value before the scandal hit, with his cases full of money, WAG molestation, and cavalier attitude to helicopter landing spots. But since he was accused of investing his clients’ money in things that they hadn’t authorised, the wackiness rating has gone through the roof.
One interview saw him crying and threatening to punch the interviewer to the poignant strains of piped Billie Holiday, while another saw him wearing what looked like liquid eyeliner. Papers linking him to a Mexican drug cartel were found in his private jet, he’s not denying suggestions that he worked for the CIA, and bathroom tiles appeared with his face on. It’s like Geoffrey Boycott’s most troubled fever dreams made manifest.
And now it’s getting krazier! After much dilly-dallying Stanford was finally indicted, and subsequently refused bail – he could be in jail for as long as a year before his trial. As the court gets its shit together, court documents are being filed, and some reveal that Stanford courted the Libyan government for investment! And that they went for it, giving him at least $500m!
Stanford went to Tripoli in January this year for a couple of days, to meet the CEO of the Libyan Investment Authority; this followed meetings with Abdulhafid Zlitni, secretary of planning in the Libyan government, last October. The form of the investment isn’t known, but if they put it in Stanford International Bank, the bank at the centre of the fraud allegations, then they can expect to get back “cents in the dollar”, if they’re lucky.
Start sharpening those conspiracy theories. I know Libya’s getting all legit recently, with their burgeoning tourist industry and only halfway provocative meetings with former enemies, but their legacy as anti-American terrorists who tried to kill Marty McFly still weighs heavy in the mind. Stanford? CIA? Libya? Investment? Fraud? Bathroom tiles? Let’s link it all up and say that Stanford was paid by the CIA to extract money from Libya and then flush it away, thereby preventing its rise from anything but a disenfranchised, boycott-ridden Islamic state. I’ve said it, now run with it, internet crazies!
Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | July 8, 2009 10:59AM |