By: KATIE MARASCO, ESQ
As facts come to light regarding the political connections of the men who ran the alleged multi-billion dollar ponzi schemes, it makes one wonder what the SEC was doing during their audits of these businesses. It’s being said that the SEC began investing Allen Stanford’s businesses in October of 2006, though the SEC won’t confirm. Billionaire Stanford has contributed financially to campaigns of U.S. law makers as well as public works, not to mention being a business owner all over the world including Antigua where many of his sketchy business transactions originated. Stanford was fined multiple times over the past few years for offenses including misleading investors and for being without enough capital to function as a securities brokerage firm. The fines were paid and it begs the question, what further attention was paid?
Bernard Madoff, once a high powered figure on Wall Street and former Chairman of the Nasdaq stock Market, has been charged with defrauding $50 million from investors. Not far behind news of the scandal making national and international publications the SEC moved forward with the case against Allen Stanford. If the SEC had suspicions about Stanford why did they not act sooner? Was there political influence involved or is this just a case of poor oversight? And if the SEC had acted sooner would the investors, now potentially out millions of dollars, have been saved some of their misfortune?
