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Kroll’s roll in the Stanford muck
Kroll Associates is the big name in the world of corporate investigations. But a former top gumshoe at Kroll has mud on his feet as a result of the firm’s past involvement with accused Ponzi mastermind Allen Stanford.
In the late 1990s, Stanford hired Kroll’s Miami office to help with a number of internal investigations. But more important, Stanford retained Kroll to help smooth the waters with a parade of federal investigators who were raising questions about Stanford’s growing banking empire on the Caribbean island nation of Antigua.
And for a long time, Stanford’s strategy of hiring Kroll to put some polish on his image appeared to work. Stanford was finally unmasked as a charlatan this year, when the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors charged the former Texas billionaire with running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.
This week’s indictment of Stanford’s former chief of security, Thomas Raffanello, may further muddy the waters over the dealings of Kroll — a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies — with Stanford.
Catch of the day
R. Allen Stanford’s indictment for his role in masterminding the second-largest Ponzi scheme ever was never in doubt, after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged him with civil fraud in February. But that’s not stopping the SEC and federal prosecutors from holding a Texas-sized shindig to trumpet their big get.
The authorities are staging a big press conference at Department of Justice headquarters to announce the filing of crimnal charges against the Texas financier, who was arrested last night in Virginia at the home of his girlfriend’s brother.
Sir Allen arrested
Finally. R. Allen Stanford, the alleged mastermind of the second largest Ponzi scheme on record, was arrested by the FBI on Thursday evening and will be officially criminally charged on Friday.
The criminal charges against Stanford, the Texas financier with the offshore bank in Antigua, comes nearly four months after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against him, and moved to shut-down his sprawling Houston-based financial empire.
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