Lawyers for Texas tycoon, Allen Stanford, have claimed that it was his former chief financial officer and not their client who was the mastermind behind an alleged seven-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Stanford is on trial for allegedly defrauding tens of thousands of investors at his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank through bogus certificates of deposit.
Stanford’s defence team told federal jurors yesterday that letters, emails and other documents showed that former CFO James M. Davis was the scheme’s mastermind.
The lawyers say Davis, who worked for Stanford for 21 years, was the sole person who created documents that inflated the value of the bank’s holdings to $6.3 billion when, in reality, it was about to collapse.
But Davis said Stanford instructed him to falsify the figures.
Stanford faces 14 counts, including mail and wire fraud, in the criminal case.
He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
