The former Sir R. Allen Stanford, the man US federal prosecutors accuse of a $7 billion investor scam through certificates of deposit in an offshore bank, saw his adopted country of Antigua and Barbuda as a “crown jewel.”
The disclosure came from a lawyer and former U.S. Customs Agent Thursday, who testified in defense of Stanford. The defense opened its case yesterday, a day after the prosecution rested, and called its first of 27 witnesses, Patrick O’Brien, to the stand. O’Brien served with Stanford during the late 1990s on a committee charged with reforming banking laws in the Caribbean nation of Antigua, where Stanford owned the largest bank. O’Brien told jurors and the court that Stanford wanted to make Antigua the “crown jewel” among Caribbean nations for providing financial services and even loaned the island’s government the money to fund the committee.
He said the vision and effort yielded new laws and a new regulatory body in Antigua, and Stanford was named to its board even though he owned an institution it was charged with overseeing.
