Florida top regulator calls for probe of Stanford deal
Published:Monday | July 13, 2009 | 4:01 PM
Florida\'s top financial officer has criticised state regulators for striking a deal that allowed Texas born financier Sir Allen Stanford to open a Miami office to sell investments and transfer a significant amount of money to Antigua and Barbuda without government oversight, according to a report on www.cananews.net.
Chief financial officer Alex Sink said she also wants to know why the state approved the arrangement a decade ago that permitted Stanford\'s Miami office to take deposits for the controversial investments now at the centre of a massive United States federal fraud case.
\"This is very troubling and should not have happened,\" said Sink, whose agency includes the Office of Financial Regulation.
Sink\'s comments came on the heels of the revelations last week that in 1998, Florida regulators, despite objections from the state\'s chief banking counsel, allowed Sir Allen to open a Miami centre to attract wealthy Latin Americans to invest in his Antigua and Barbuda-based Stanford International Bank (SIB).
Under the unique agreement, Sir Allen was allowed to create a foreign trust office that could bypass regulators, officials said.
Linda Charity, acting director of the Department of Financial Services, said her office has been investigating the special trust office set up by Stanford since 2007.
\"I can tell you that we have been well aware of this and have been looking into since 2007,\" she said, adding that regulators took no action.
Linda Charity, acting director of the Department of Financial Services, said her office has been investigating the special trust office set up by Stanford since 2007.
\"I can tell you that we have been well aware of this and have been looking into since 2007,\" she said, adding that regulators took no action.
Florida State Democratic Senator Dave Aronberg, a former US Treasury attorney who worked on international money laundering cases, said the state should impanel a grand jury.
\"We had a list of countries that were most prone to money laundering, and one of the countries that we followed was Antigua,\" he said.
\"I never would have thought Florida would have enabled this,\" he added.