'A charismatic dictator': friend's verdict on Allen Stanford
Friday 03 February 2012
Latest in Americas
Related articles
On Facebook
From the blogs
Disclosure: We’d never even been to a club when we made our first single
For most of us, reaching eighteen years of age opens up a new world for exploration, spontaneity and...
Top of the posts: Drunken rants, the Western Fail and misogyny pushers
The most read blogs this week, as determined by stats.
Sepp Blatter: Penalty shoot-outs must remain, they’re football’s great leveller
As England supporters, we should scorn at any such deciding factor within football. On so many occas...
Why do some men consider the street as a female meat market?
Pronouncements on sexual inequality in the UK are normally met with an eye roll by my generation. As...
Allen Stanford ruled as a "charismatic dictator" by using "money, flattery, intimidation and fear" to carry out a $7 billion investment fraud, the businessman's former finance chief told a court in Houston, Texas, yesterday.
Jason Davis, once a college roommate of Stanford, gave evidence against his former boss having pleaded guilty in 2009 to aiding him in the alleged Ponzi scheme.
Facing 30 years in prison for his own part in the crime, Davis said that he had realised as long ago as 1991 that the business he was working for was based on a scam, yet he aided Stanford because he wanted to "please" him. "I was proud, embarrassed. I was a coward," he admitted.
On the most dramatic day of the trial so far, Davis testified that he began discussing the significant gap between what the Stanford International Bank owed its investors and the actual value of its assets one year later.
But his employer reassured him "the bank was going to grow and dwarf this small amount that was so-called missing," he said, claiming Stanford, pictured, believed they would be able to "close that hole".
Having pleaded not guilty, Stanford's defence is that he was merely the gregarious front for the business, and that he was unaware of its illegal and flawed model because Davis, as the man in charge of the accounts, misled him. However, Davis said that Stanford had even joked that he would use this defence if they were ever caught, telling him: "I'll tell them you were on the books and I was out building my companies... I'll just blame it all on you."
Nevertheless, he stayed on as chief financial officer, refusing even to trust his secrets with his wife. "I believed in Mr Stanford – wrongfully so, regrettably so, God forgive me so," he said yesterday. "But I continued to stay there and lie with him."
Davis said that at one point the pair did not speak for three months, but that their relationship could also be the stuff of Hollywood – such as when Stanford took him for a ride in his new Mercedes Benz at 170mph.
Their bank, which collapsed at the cost of investments from thousands of people around the world, had been based in the Caribbean – first in Montserrat and then in Antigua – in order to avoid the oversight of US regulators, Davis told the jury.
He added that Stanford had even agreed to "codify" an agreement which would shield the bank from scrutiny with Antigua's main banking regulator, Leroy King. "Mr Stanford said they actually cut themselves and had a blood oath," said Davis, to the apparent surprise of Stanford in the dock.
- 1 Mark Zuckerberg saved $111m by selling Facebook shares before stock slumped
- 2 Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim
- 3 News in pictures
- 4 Tory chief Warsi failed to declare rent income from flat
- 5 In pictures: The bewildering face of China
- 6 Osborne to face questions over links to Murdoch
- 7 Is Ridley Scott the most macho man in movies?
- 8 Postgraduate students are being used as 'slave labour'
- 9 Günter Grass attacks Merkel for Athens policy
- 10 Exclusive dispatch: Assad blamed for massacre of the innocents
- 1 Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim
- 2 Hardcore, hard-wired: How the prevalence of porn is changing our everyday lives
- 3 Fat? Really? Olympic hope laughs off official’s jibe – but others aren’t amused
- 4 Leading article: Ten questions for Jeremy Hunt
- 5 Is Ridley Scott the most macho man in movies?
- 6 'Hello mum, this is going to be hard for you to read ...'
- 7 Postgraduate students are being used as 'slave labour'
- 8 Exclusive dispatch: Assad blamed for massacre of the innocents
- 9 Coke reveals its secret: It may need to carry a cancer warning
- 10 French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters
Experience the Heineken Hub
Get free wi-fi and exclusive i content while you enjoy a tasty pint of Heineken at participating pubs.
Can you imagine a career in teaching?
Be inspired to teach - let real teachers show you how rewarding the job can be.
Playing a game-changing role during the Games
Cisco is providing the solutions for London 2012's complex IT needs.
Enter the latest Independent competitions
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Business videos from commercial thought leaders
Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.
Career Services
Day In a Page
The secret life of the red carpet
Up and away – how '7 Up' went global


