- há 3 semanas
Categoria
😹
DiversãoTranscrição
00:00On American TV in the middle of the noughties, you used to see this commercial.
00:30Stanford Financial Group was then a flourishing financial empire that promised investment returns that were astounding but fake.
00:44In charge of this massive fraud was a Texan billionaire, Alan Stanford, seen here in his Houston offices.
00:52I am truly honored and truly excited to lead our companies forward in the 21st century.
00:58He was never a billionaire. That's the point, I think, because it was all a fraud.
01:03So, I mean, what he lived off was other people's money.
01:06He stole in excess of $5 billion from investors, either for his own personal wealth or to build his empire.
01:16In 2008, law enforcement put an end to this incredible fraud that had ruined 21,000 victims.
01:24For over 25 years, this man ran a Ponzi scheme, the same kind of scam used by the famous Bernard Madoff.
01:33He has a unique combination of ego, narcissism and greed that people like him and Madoff and that type of schemer or fraudster typically possess.
01:46We have uncovered dozens of unseen videos, internal promotional films from the Stanford Bank, which show a life made up of lies, opulence and kitsch.
01:59The Stanford legacy began nearly 70 years ago back in Mahaya, Texas, where my grandfather started.
02:05His life was fake. His history was fake. His bank was fake.
02:08Alan Stanford is a white collar criminal who's never hidden away, but instead created a public image as a trustworthy banker.
02:16From the way he dressed, to the gold pin, to the constant appearances at Washington Mixers or giving money to non-profit organizations, it was all an act.
02:30Freeing himself from laws, governments and morals, Stanford built himself an empire that allowed him to operate in complete secrecy.
02:38It was on a small, corrupt island in the Caribbean, Antigua and Barbuda, where he acted like a quasi-dictator.
02:45He could toss money at the administration and get his own way and dictate the policies of this twin island state of about 90,000 people.
02:56In our investigation, from his former offices in the Caribbean to his banks in Houston and Miami and as far as his hometown in Texas, we found key witnesses to this disgraceful story.
03:07Several former employees who are close to Alan Stanford, but also a victim, and the prosecutor who brought about his downfall.
03:23They all paint a portrait of a larger-than-life criminal with startling charisma.
03:27It's that outsized, big ego, tall-talkin' Texan. It's almost like J.R. in the TV series Dallas. Right? Those kind of figures. It's the mythical Texas asshole, liar, business person who will do anything to get ahead. And Alan Stanford was that myth. They were perfect.
03:49This is the portrait of this Texan monster, the billionaire pirate of the Caribbean, a true symbol of the failure of the American financial system.
03:58This isn't running, is it? This is off.
04:28The story starts here, in the town of Mexia, Texas. It's a small community of 6,000 people, where Alan Stanford was born on the 24th of March, 1950.
04:43His father, James, worked in insurance, and was also mayor of the town. His mother, Sammy, was a homemaker.
04:51Although the Stanford family were well known in the town, there was nothing to indicate that Alan, the young country boy, would go on to live a life of indecent opulence.
04:59Fifty years later, Dave Henry became one of his close collaborators. For 10 years, he handled the audiovisual promotion of Alan Stanford's financial empire.
05:12Fascinated by the story, he's continued to research his former boss.
05:17The story is going to be played tonight, and I normally don't get emotional or...
05:26So, there you have it. Egomaniac, Martinet, sociopath...
05:29Look, it's me. About 30 pounds heavier.
05:33Psychopath, psychopath. That's Alan Stanford.
05:37Mahea is a very small town in the Bible Belt, as we call it here.
05:43So, typically, very conservative, religious, Baptist-specifically kind of people.
05:59In that environment, it looks to me like they were probably the wealthiest family in town.
06:05I went back and saw newspaper headlines, and one of the newspaper headlines was,
06:09Alan Stanford celebrates fourth birthday with 12 friends.
06:13You know, so mom would buy the little article, or she'd call the newspaper editor.
06:18Alan grew up a lot. He was soon over six foot tall. His physique was exceptional.
06:24He had an intense gaze, a deep voice, a handshake to crush your fingers, and an impressive build.
06:30In the late 1960s, he gained a degree in business here at Baylor University.
06:38Very early, the young man seemed obsessed with success.
06:43He would tell you, I'm not just going to be rich, I'm going to be the richest person in the world,
06:48or among the richest persons in the world.
06:51So, you know, he was driven by this desire to be a billionaire.
06:55And to make a fortune in the mid-1970s, fitness was a promising sector.
07:01Americans were won over to the trend by the muscles of the young Arnold Schwarzenegger.
07:06In Waco, Texas, Alan Stanford attended a club in the town suburbs here in this shopping area.
07:13Full of confidence, he bought it and renamed it Total Fitness Club.
07:16Life was pretty comfortable for Alan Stanford up until that time.
07:26I think, you know, Dad was paying for college. Dad was paying for his house.
07:31Dad paid for him to buy his first business.
07:34So, he was kind of a spoiled, upper-middle-class kid.
07:39Alan Stanford took a gamble, making the club exclusively male.
07:42It was an immediate success.
07:45He was the first of clubs to have his new kinds of, you know, weightlifting machines that, you know,
07:51were all chains and stuff.
07:53He was able to get those into his club.
07:56That was sort of the secret of his success.
07:59Gary Finley was 19 years old at the time.
08:02He was looking for his first job when he was taken on as an unskilled worker at Total Fitness Club.
08:06The first time I met him, I was actually inside, vacuuming inside the fitness center and I heard this noise.
08:15I went and looked out the window and he was landing in a helicopter.
08:18Here's this guy walks in, he's dressed immaculate, good-looking guy.
08:22Just had that confidence about himself that he could pretty much take on the world.
08:28In a few years, Alan Stanford opened seven ultra-luxurious gyms all over Texas.
08:35Clients snapped up annual subscriptions at $1,000 a piece.
08:40He knew how to manage the sale from the time a person walked in the door till the time they leave.
08:46So he was a closer. He was an amazing salesman.
08:52The industry at that time was all about making money.
08:55And one of the things that Alan had, at least as far as I knew, perfected at that time no one else was doing,
09:02was how to create a bank draft and to draft people's checking accounts.
09:08At the age of 30, Alan Robert Stanford was a married man with a family and also a daring entrepreneur.
09:13But in 1982, intoxicated with his own success, he overstretched himself.
09:20He opened an ultra-luxurious complex in the center of Houston in the middle of the oil crisis.
09:26With the collapse of the American economy, his sports empire couldn't survive.
09:33The fall was so dramatic that young Gary Finlay, then only a manager, was able to buy the club in Waco.
09:43Alan was that true look of success.
09:47But what I found out after I took the business over was that probably his biggest problem was he was taking in money, spending money, but wasn't paying bills.
09:58And shortly after that, maybe a year or two later, he and his wife filed personal bankruptcy teams.
10:04The fitness king had accumulated debts of $13.6 million, a crushing failure.
10:12This was the start of a dark period of his life.
10:15Alan Stanford suddenly adopted a low profile.
10:18The last time I saw Alan, he was flipping hamburgers.
10:21So whenever he got out of the fitness business, the next thing I saw him do, he started a little hamburger restaurant here in town.
10:30And I mean, I literally saw him behind the counter flipping hamburgers.
10:34The Texan was to reappear three years later, determined to rebuild his fortune.
10:39In 1985, during a visit to a Caribbean island, he met a European expat.
10:47During the conversation, the man gave him an idea for making lots of money without complicating his life.
10:53He was a bit of a financial wizard and he explained offshore banking in the Caribbean to Alan Stanford and how easy it was to set up a bank and make money.
11:07And apparently Stanford took notes right then and there on a legal pad.
11:11In 1986, Alan Stanford arrived on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean, an island where money laundering, tax evasion and financial crime were almost encouraged.
11:22There were 300 banks for a population of 12,000 people.
11:27When he arrived, Alan Stanford trusted in his remarkable powers of persuasion.
11:32Larry DiMaria knew him well and much later became his PR manager.
11:39He's a very larger than life person. I think he's six foot four.
11:43Big head, very bon army, you know, he's very, talks loud.
11:48But it wasn't an unpleasant experience to meet him.
11:53If you're asking me if he had the gift for gab, yeah, I think he had the gift for gab.
11:58You don't have to know too much about the financial markets to sound intelligent.
12:03The jargon is not that hard at all. You read the financial press and you can understand it.
12:06It's your victims who don't know the jargon.
12:10With his charisma, he attracted clients in the Caribbean, recruited a few employees and opened the Guardian International Bank with a few dollars.
12:18To head it, he gathered a team with one thing in common, utter financial incompetence.
12:27There was his father, James Stanford, a former insurance agent, a lawyer, a judge and even a car salesman.
12:36Paul Pelletier is the prosecutor who would bring down Alan Stanford 20 years later.
12:45It was a board of directors that was made up of nobodies.
12:50People that were either related by family or by blood or by friendship to Mr. Stanford.
12:56His father was chairman emeritus of the company. His father was still living, I think, down in Mejia, Texas, knew nothing about the company, was just like a figurehead.
13:08Having already demonstrated his incompetence in accountancy, he was careful this time to bring in a trustworthy accountant, an old university friend, James Davis.
13:17He reached out to his old college buddy, James Davis, in order to provide some financial credibility and to do the books and records of this bank.
13:30Mr. Davis, at least when he was introduced to the concept, believed it was going to be a legitimate bank.
13:36He soon learned that it wasn't.
13:38Alan Stanford had decided not to burden himself with concerns over legality.
13:42He set up a massive scam to steal money from gullible investors.
13:47The scheme from day one until it ended in 2009 was based on the concept that he was investing in equities and safe investments, like equities, for people across the world.
14:06What in reality was happening was about literally less than 20% of what they're investing would actually be invested in these safe investments.
14:17The type of fraud was 100 years old, a Ponzi scheme named after a crook who operated in Boston in the 1920s.
14:25It was a simple but bold swindle, which involved selling so-called safe and very lucrative investments to clients.
14:32In reality, the investments were completely bogus.
14:38Stanford didn't invest the money and pocketed nearly all of it.
14:42But how did he pay people who wanted to take their money out?
14:47He simply used the money of new clients to pay the old ones.
14:50As long as you have enough new investors to pay off old investors, then you have what could be a beautiful Ponzi scheme.
15:06Well away from the controls of the financial authorities in their cosy Caribbean bank, Alan Stanford and James Davis simply had to publish falsified accounts to cover up their fraud.
15:19It was a real piece of paper with a real list of investments that you could take away and you could audit it and say,
15:26yes, if these investments are here, these are the values and you could check it out, except they never owned any of it.
15:33Everything was false. It was just a complete false list of investments which they had properly worked out to give you the right number on the balance sheet.
15:38Alan Stanford quickly became rich. In 1987, his bank's books stood at nearly $15 million.
15:49But two years later, the authorities on the island of Montserrat suddenly tightened their banking regulations.
15:55In approximately 1989, the Montserrat bank officials found out that Alan Stanford had filed for bankruptcy in Texas and had not reported it to them.
16:11And that was one of the reasons why he was kicked out of Montserrat in the late 80s.
16:15Alan Stanford quickly needed to find a new location if he didn't want to see his fake bank collapse like a pyramid of sand.
16:21Fortunately for him, there was no shortage of tax havens in the Caribbean.
16:27You know, you can see Antigua from Montserrat.
16:31So I can imagine Alan Stanford going, huh, what am I going to do next?
16:36And looking out over the horizon, oh, there's Antigua.
16:42Antigua and Barbuda are two West Indian islands to the north of Guadalupe, and they gained independence in 1981.
16:48A single family ruled over the 80,000 inhabitants, the Byrd family.
16:53Suspected of dabbling in arms and cocaine smuggling, the dynasty transformed this idyllic country into a refuge for criminals of all kinds.
17:02One day, I go to a lunch, and I meet a man who is a fugitive from the United States.
17:08He was indicted in the United States for bank fraud, and he'd moved to Antigua.
17:14He became a citizen of Antigua, and at that time, the Antiguan government would not let anybody be extradited.
17:19So this American had moved to Antigua, and he was sitting there having lunch, living very well, eating some sort of wonderful seafood salad.
17:28The next day, who should I run into?
17:30I ran into an online gambling king who had spent some time in a U.S. federal prison.
17:35So on two consecutive days, you meet people who are getting in deep trouble with the U.S. law, and they're going to Antigua.
17:43So it's a small island, but there seems to be a relatively high concentration of some white-collar criminals.
17:51In the early 1990s, Alan Stanford, on leaving Montserrat, contacted the Byrd family.
18:03Martina Johnson is a journalist in Antigua. She's investigated the bankers' rise.
18:11So when Stanford would have come here, the government would have welcomed that sort of investment,
18:15because it offered the level of development that the country has always wanted and has always sought.
18:22The Bank of Antigua at the time, in the early 1990s, was having financial problems.
18:27He was able to, because he had stolen so much money already, he was able to make loans
18:33and actually purchase the Bank of Antigua to prop up the Bank of Antigua,
18:38which was very helpful to the Byrd family, who was politically in charge.
18:41He also was able to bribe appropriate politicians to get what he needed to do.
18:47Of course, when you have the head of the organization that should have been monitoring the Bank,
18:51that is part of this alleged corruption, then it is not that it went unnoticed.
18:57It was just facilitated and ignored.
19:01Here, there was no FBI or police to bother him.
19:05Alan Stanford has found his own personal kingdom.
19:07In 1991, he built an impressive headquarters.
19:14With a lot of kitsch columns, the building is one of the most luxurious on the island.
19:19The very modest Stanford International Bank employed island residents.
19:26No one knew very much about finance, but that didn't really matter when you were working in a fake bank.
19:30Today, the offices are empty.
19:43The files of the clients who are robbed are piled high.
19:47But you can still imagine the prosperity that reigned here for over 20 years.
19:50It was like a Hollywood set, where everything was at the front of a building, but if you go and sneak a peek behind what appears to be the front of a building, there's nothing there.
20:08With a fine set, you also need a good story.
20:12And Alan Stanford had plenty of imagination.
20:15Okay.
20:17He started by inventing a prestigious family history.
20:20The Stanford legacy began nearly 70 years ago back in Mejia, Texas, where my grandfather started Stanford Insurance Company during the height of the Great Depression.
20:29He repeated this legend over many years in brochures, interviews, and corporate videos like this one.
20:38He may not have been a real banker, but he became a brilliant communicator.
20:43We were founded on my grandfather's strong, simple philosophy.
20:48Build a business, step by step. Building a business, step by step.
20:53Hard work, clear vision, and value for clients.
20:55His whole life story is invented.
20:58He understood that people typically are not going to believe that a man without any financial acumen from Mejia, Texas, is managing a multi-billion dollar financial services company on his own.
21:16With Eagle Vision, we will continue to search the world for new investment opportunities.
21:20Alan Stanford adopted a highly symbolic logo, the eagle of American independence.
21:27The eagle soars because potential truly has no boundary.
21:33The eagle, the eagle. He had a fetish about eagles.
21:38Every office had a huge marble eagle statue, kind of like the American eagle, you know, the aggressive, I might eat you kind of eagle.
21:51When he opened an office in Panama City, the president of Panama came to the Stanford office opening, and the gift was a huge crystal eagle.
22:00This was the mid-1990s, and Wall Street madness had contaminated the world with dreams of wealth and investments in stocks and shares.
22:14Alan Stanford targeted a booming market, the middle classes in South America.
22:25Jamie Escalona, an advisor on new technologies, lived in Venezuela at the time.
22:31Attracted by Stanford's marketing, he invested all of his savings, $1.2 million.
22:35The banks were very kind of nice, luxurious, they have a marble, very nice art in the banks.
22:48And the economic situations even in Venezuela and other countries in Latin America, they weren't that stable.
22:56So we were looking for stability. We didn't have a social security system that works.
23:02We're looking for something that will give us security for our future to be able to retire and to pay for our children's education as well.
23:11The internet was still in its early days, and there were few trustworthy sources of information.
23:16So Jamie Escalona wasn't suspicious, especially since the Stanford banks were offering profitable and very safe investments,
23:22known as certificates of deposit or CDs.
23:28A unique thing about certificates of deposit, usually they tend to be long-term investments.
23:35That helps a Ponzi scheme because you don't have a lot of people withdrawing their money at the same time,
23:41because people are waiting for the maturation of the certificate of deposit.
23:45The financial advisors, they presented material that were very convincing material,
23:52with brochures and also letters of guarantees that our investments would be secure.
23:58And really, the investments weren't that higher than all the banks.
24:02They were like 1%, 2% higher.
24:05So we didn't see that the investments or the returns that the banks are offering,
24:10they were really out of whack, they were kind of within reason, so we felt comfortable.
24:17Like Jamie, entire families invested between $10,000 and $1 million with unquestioning faith.
24:25These huge sums almost all ended up in the pocket of Alan Stamford.
24:30The con-man boosted his communications.
24:34He spent more and more on all sorts of corporate videos,
24:36and even on TV commercials broadcast on major channels like CNN.
24:40The Miami version of the VNM.
25:01Dave Henry was his in-house video producer.
25:05He worked on more than a hundred of these films.
25:06films he worked on the image stuff you know he didn't work on the numbers when i saw him working
25:12it was working on scripts or working on brochures or working on the next video or working on what
25:19he was going to say when cnn interviewed him that day all right ready we are revamping our marketing
25:26strategy in effect we are reinventing ourselves he was lying and it's easier to tell a lie once
25:34and have it videotaped then have to tell it over and over and over in person alan stanford encouraged
25:42everyone to act for the camera the sales people were naturally talented
25:48and even james davis his valuable accountant was forced to appear on camera new platform funds
25:54were established to me the the most interesting thing that i found in my tape library and going
26:00back and looking at the two characters that are alan stanford and jim davis is we never pierced the
26:06armor of alan stanford he's always this guy confident bold i never saw a moment of doubt
26:14when you go back and look at his right hand man jim davis on tape man he was nervous stuttery had a lot
26:23of ticks you think in terms of did did i satisfy that need versus what it was the money
26:32would stare off into the distance when he was done with a take as if
26:36wondering about what he just said and that contrast only illuminates what an actor
26:41alan stanford was our business has expanded at such a rate that we now occupy
26:46alan stanford the actor when he wasn't playing the banker for the camera or falsifying the accounts
26:54dedicated himself to what he did best spending his investors money
27:00personifying the famous american saying he became larger than life
27:04he would often buy um real estate buy planes and buy boats he bought a mansion in miami
27:17which was a castle the house in saint croix i've seen it's amazing it sits up on a hill overlooking
27:22one of the harbors it was a superstar house really cool in these rare videos filmed by american law
27:31enforcement after his arrest we see the texans unimaginable lifestyle
27:40this house comprises dozens of rooms a meeting room suitable for a spy movie with a retractable scream
27:47a gym and a collection of clothes shoes
27:58and beer
28:02on the island of saint croix alan stanford owned six other properties and even a shopping mall
28:08in texas and florida he owned more houses and luxury apartments
28:15but he spent most of his time at sea aboard his sea eagle
28:24alan stanford had a very nice yacht but he wanted it to be 10 foot longer so rather than just buy a yacht
28:31a yacht that's 10 foot longer he actually had this yacht expanded uh 10 or 12 feet longer which cost
28:39more than 100 million dollars to to expand he had seven airplanes that he bought so he bought whatever
28:50toys he needed at the time and he had a full service group of pilots servants and and people around him
28:59that he was paying constantly so he led a very good lifestyle at the turn of the century alan stanford
29:06was an immensely wealthy criminal who'd never been bothered by the american authorities
29:18at fort worth in the texas offices of the securities and exchange commission
29:22the american financial watchdog alan stanford had been suspected of financial fraud since 1997
29:31two reports highlighting his activities had already been produced and yet in spite of repeated
29:36requests by investigators those in charge refused to open an investigation
29:41there was an individual in fort worth who was in charge of the fort worth
29:45texas sec enforcement division his name was spencer barish as soon as he left the sec
29:52alan stanford tried to hire him we do know on one occasion without the permission of the sec and behind
29:58the back of the sec he actually met and provided services for alan stanford in exchange for money
30:05certainly it lends suspicion to the reasons he may have rejected the exam division's request for
30:13action by the enforcement division larry did maria who is a trader and wall street journalist says this
30:20kind of murky relationship was common you're making a hundred thousand dollars a year for the sec
30:29and then you're investigating somebody will pay you 250 000 a year well what are you going to do it's
30:35happened all the time the laxity allowed the fraud to grow to a colossal scale between 2000 and 2001
30:43stanford international bank announced record growth of 44 percent and for the first time in its history
30:49turnover of more than a billion dollars was by then a multi-billion dollar company that was all over
30:59the newspapers in new york and was making inroads not only in the caribbean but in new york london
31:05zurich and elsewhere across the world wealth no longer seems to be the only goal of the texan monster
31:13in these videos he displays more and more signs of excessive ego
31:20i've accomplished something that very few people have accomplished in their lifetime
31:25making money anymore is not my driving thing doing something that i enjoy and a change and
31:34ultimately is something that i feel real good about that's what's driving me alan stanford's personality
31:40gradually became unfathomable was he an exceptional mythomaniac or really schizophrenic he believed
31:46things about himself which were patently untrue maybe he came to believe that he was related to the
31:53to the founder of stanford university maybe he came to believe that he was a genius with money
31:59maybe he came to believe he was aristocracy i personally think he came to believe his own myth
32:04that it wasn't it was an act but he came to believe his own act
32:09on the island of antigua stanford full of his own importance made himself a small kingdom for his glory
32:16as you arrived at the airport everything belonged to him starting with the airline
32:23as you went up the avenue you saw his bank
32:27then the sticky wicket a restaurant
32:29several financial institutions a fine dining restaurant and even an observatory to admire his domain
32:41he had so many businesses he was the second highest employer in antigua after the government it was
32:52stanford 900 plus workers none of those made money they all lost money and the airline i think cost him
33:02cost him cost the investors about 300 million dollars before he shut it down again
33:06he owned property but he also wanted to own minds he created his own propaganda tool the antigua sun
33:15every week sycophantic articles were published in praise of stanford antigua and the government
33:24in these editions dating from 2006 dozens of pages were devoted to a single event alan stanford had just been knighted by the government of antigua
33:38his knighthood um many antigua and i don't want to say most but many antigua were against it to get our highest national award
33:51would have been a slap in the face of residents who thought that he was too pompous and he
33:57tossed money at them and he thought very little of the people who live here when he was knighted he he
34:02did refer to himself as sir alan stanford and and required or requested people to to call him sir alan stanford as well
34:12what do you call somebody who
34:14thinks big but just doesn't have enough to do it you know they just don't
34:18they think bigger than they think bigger than they are
34:22egomaniacs is what you call them in private stanford also behaved like a medieval lord
34:31a powerful sovereign who no one could resist he was a serial womanizer but one time i was with him at
34:38a cocktail party i happened to be standing in the same conversation group and he somebody said you look a little
34:44rough today alan or mr stanford and he said oh i'm hungover i got in early this morning i took my jet
34:51down to porto varta last night i was chasing some pussy so that was the kind of guy he was right here's
34:58the ceo he's everybody who was standing around's boss and yet he would just tell you that he was out
35:06chasing skirt would be a nicer way of saying that um but that that just you know he didn't mind it was
35:14not a a secret that there were uh wives past wives girlfriends children from many women when he wanted
35:22something stanford had no limits in 2005 he paid 65 million dollars to buy himself an island he owned made
35:30an island just off the shore of antiga here which he built a dummy house if you like to see how it
35:36would look and then knocked it down with a view to building it permanently later this was alan stanford's
35:44monumental plan to transform his private island he wanted to build a club and a marina with capacity
35:51for up to 30 yachts in antigua the impression of alan stanford's ostentatious and opulent wealth was in
36:03strong contrast to the small wooden houses with corrugated roofs and the caribbean island's reggae rasta
36:09atmosphere there were some people who who saw him as an investor who had interest in the development
36:17of the country and so he had great support from that group and then there was this other group
36:22that thought he was just here to grab our lands he was just here to take all the pristine properties
36:28and this man with money who is white is coming to manipulate this little island and our leaders
36:36just accepted monies to give him his way the local newspaper outlet even wondered whether it was the
36:42government or alan stanford running the country many had no doubt that the island had gone from being
36:48a british colony to a stanford colony alan stanford was a massive individual in antiga and when i say
36:56massive he was powerful he was a dictator the residents in antiga and barbuda protested against stanford for
37:05a long time stanford had given bread to the antiquians but now he was going to give them sports to ensure
37:12their silence his greatest coup was funding the most popular sport in the caribbean cricket
37:20when alan stanford does something he doesn't do it by halves he does it to its best opposite his bank
37:27he built a magnificent stadium with a giant screen the stanford cricket ground
37:33there is alan stanford does sir viv richards in 2005 he brought together the best players from the caribbean
37:40in a single team for superstars he set up a professional tournament in his name in which
37:46caribbean teams played against the greatest nations in cricket such as england
37:58it gave life to a sport that we love here in the caribbean cricket and it put us on the
38:03international market because everyone espn the world was watching the caribbean at the stanford
38:10cricket ground antiga was his haven bishop one thing to say it was one hell of a game
38:24away from reality alan stanford started taunting wall street in the mid-naughties
38:29he tried to poach workers from historic banks like merrill lynch or learman brothers
38:37i am stanford i am stanford all these traders came with their clients potential future victims
38:49charles haslett formerly at merrill lynch joined the stanford bank in 2002 attracted by the texans
38:55persuasive arguments he was aloof and distant most of the time but if he was talking to you
39:03or trying to motivate you he could be very motivational
39:08he threw around a lot of money you know mentioned big bonuses i want a car i want a hundred thousand
39:13dollar car for selling the most cds uh he delivered on that
39:17you know it was a big show in front of the other employees you know a round of applause for me kind
39:24of a little bit embarrassing actually for me you know i didn't like to be put in that position but
39:29you know i was happy to win the car and alan stanford continued to gratify his need for power even when
39:35he was rewarding his employees
39:39at ceremonies like this one he prolonged the suspense by lining up the finalists on stage
39:45before announcing who would win the prize he must have spent 10 minutes walking behind each one of
39:50them and he tapped one on the shoulder of course that person thought they won the ten thousand dollars
39:56and he go you know aurelio did a good job walked in and he touched the woman and go all the way across
40:02and back and forth i compared it to like someone pulling wings off of flies that's how horrible it
40:10was even even people in the audience were shifting around i've never seen a more egotistical egomaniacal
40:18performance by a person in my life and he finally tapped somebody he was just getting off
40:23on making these people feel uncomfortable to ensure the devotion of his employees he spent money lavishly
40:28in new york stanford invited 300 financial advisors to the intercontinental hotel the cost of the
40:34festivities was 1.5 million dollars there was a recreation of studio 54 disco so they had a huge ballroom
40:45in midtown manhattan decorated like studio 54 with actors playing the famous people who hung out in
40:53studio 54 like andy warhol elton john bianca jagger and they were going around with boxes of props making
41:01sure you had fun this party was over the top but that was typical they'd they'd go to a city and
41:07and go nuts for the weekend new orleans caracas london everybody in the office kind of i believe knew
41:19or had the same questions i did but nobody would speak up they were all making good money just kind
41:24of looked the other way because you're making you know your annual income is probably twice what it
41:29normally would be you know in 2008 alan stanford was the 205th richest american according to the
41:36forbes magazine ranking his fortune was estimated at 2.2 billion dollars
41:44but the texan giant would see the base of his pyramid gradually start to crumble
41:48a handful of honest employees started to ask difficult questions charles haslett was one of them
42:00he wondered why an international bank used a tiny accounting firm that was completely unknown
42:09their answer was that they had been with them for 20 years it's a small firm and very well run
42:14uh that i should have no concerns i wanted more answers and they wouldn't give them to me at that
42:21point it became more like uh you know are you family are you are you do you trust us are you part of the
42:27team you know it was basically like this either i conformed to how things are how things are and not
42:37ask any more questions so i didn't want to resign right away i said let me think about it and within
42:4424 hours i did resign larry de maria also suspected massive fraud but he couldn't ask questions either
42:54he had four women who worked on desks leading up to his office and then he had a woman named yolanda
43:00suarez who was his chief of staff and it would have taken i think the first marine division to get
43:05through those four people to get into his office i think i was in his office maybe three times larry was
43:13eventually fired for incompetence alan stanford attacked anyone who doubted him he sued everyone
43:21who came near him with any kind of complaint i mean he had 30 in-house lawyers and he had some top
43:27outside counsel so i don't think he thought he had anything to worry about but in september 2008
43:34the noose started to tighten the world was experiencing the worst financial crisis in
43:40history which two months later brought about the very public arrest of bernard madoff
43:44who ran a ponzi scheme worth 65 billion dollars
43:51that warning would have worried the most determined of criminals but not alan stanford who proclaimed loud
43:56and clear that he would come out of the crisis without a blemish international advisory board meeting
44:01but our balance sheet is strong our liquidity is exceptional and we are in these difficult times
44:08going to grow our business and i think that his downfall was close but alan stanford was in total denial
44:15for years he thought he'd gained the protection of the american political class
44:19by contributing to election campaigns the businessman gave a total of 1.6 million dollars to the republican
44:26and democrat parties one of the beneficiaries was barack obama in 2008 that same year he contributed
44:35two hundred thousand dollars to the democrats congressional campaign at the party's national
44:40convention he was warmly thanked by bill clinton and i'd like to thank the sanford financial group
44:47for helping to underwrite this in 2008 george bush also thanked him in this official letter
44:56the company's like yours are helping more americans build a solid foundation for the future
45:10despite these connections the con artist couldn't hold out much longer
45:15his bank claimed to hold 8.5 billion dollars whereas in reality it only had 20 million
45:20the only reason these guys were caught was because during the financial crisis everybody
45:29want they got everybody got scared in this country when all the mortgage is going down people being
45:32thrown out of work people wanted to get their money back and for the first time in his history
45:40the new investments were not sufficient to cover the withdrawals they didn't have the money to give them
45:45back because that's what it's a ponzi scheme so that's why they were caught the government didn't
45:50catch them the media didn't catch them they were caught because there was other crooks brought down
45:57the financial system the complaints were piling up and in february 2009 paul paletti air a prosecutor
46:03in florida succeeded in worrying alan stanford he arrested laura pendergast holt one of his close
46:09collaborators for a minor offense in order to try to obtain information we attempted to interview laura
46:22pendergast holt after her arrest um but that was not successful um because um she she quickly got an
46:31attorney and and the interview interview was ended before we were able to examine her about the assets
46:39or the lack of assets in in stanford international bank but this first arrest was to bring down
46:45the fraudsters empire like a house of cards that was the seminal event for obtaining the rest of the
46:55evidence that this whole enterprise was a big ponzi scheme jame davis saw her arrest
47:03quickly and knew that he was next and he did not want to be arrested that way he readily admitted that
47:13the stanford international bank was a ponzi scheme from day one and that they had been lying to
47:20investors with false accounting false results false reports and they had been mishandling the investments
47:29for a long long time approximately 25 years alan stanford was arrested on the 17th of february 2009
47:37in virginia hiding in a girlfriend's house he was immediately sent to prison but he didn't seem
47:43to realize what was happening and claimed he was innocent he went on tv a couple of times saying that
47:50this was all a big mistake a big misunderstanding that the investments were there that there was hard
47:57assets um and that there was five billion dollars and that this was a big scheme by the sec to to
48:03ruin him at the time aram roston obtained an interview with alan stanford who pretended to be surprised
48:10he acted very heartfelt he tried to get across that his world was now collapsing and he tried
48:17he tried to make it sound that he deserved pity he implored me at one point i remember he said
48:24he said think imagine have you ever lost somebody have you ever lost a loved one has anybody ever
48:30close to you ever died he said that's what it's like for me now because of course he's comparing
48:35this to losing his company and everything he owned all his accounts were frozen and on the 17th of
48:40february 2009 the sec closed all the stanford banks and raided the offices in houston ladies and gentlemen
48:46uh federal court has uh put this entity under uh receivership for the investors it was chaos
48:55we went to the bank and there were a lot of people there at the bank in trying to get into
49:00the building there were hundreds of people lined up uh people crying people panicking
49:08we're trying to get the the financial advisors getting some answers there were so many people there
49:14it felt like being in a riot within a bank meanwhile in prison alan stanford was savagely beaten up by a
49:23fellow detainee he got famously beaten up really really badly in prison um it's it's been a rough
49:34it's been a rough go for alan stanford i can't say i feel sorry for him but he hasn't gotten
49:40the country club treatment that so many white collar criminals get in this country he's had the real
49:46penitentiary experience the trial started in houston in 2012 over seven weeks alan stanford's arguments were
49:54very very vague given the damning proof he showed absolutely no humanity towards his 21 000 victims
50:04he was very unsympathetic and didn't see any emotions he didn't uh make any any apologies to the
50:17victims the people affected so uh it's one of the things that uh he didn't apologize in may 2012 he was
50:28sentenced to 110 years in prison his victims have so far received only one cent for every dollar lost
50:35for jamie that corresponds to nine thousand dollars out of the 1.2 million dollars invested
50:41so for the last seven years he's been fighting to highlight the situation through his victims group
50:45i try not to get sentimental it's very kind of difficult for me to receive personal stories about
50:53people dying people desperate sometimes asking me for help because they don't have food or they don't
51:02have money to pay for operations uh it's terrible it's having even young people and older people
51:11dying and not being able to pay for their living expenses it's very hard when i receive all these
51:20letters it's telling me my husband died he had a heart attack he couldn't handle losing everything after 50
51:29years working hard
51:32this case was important to me because we were able to put the bad people in jail but we were never able
51:44to finish recovering their money i left the government in 2011 and um so i was never able to finish the job
51:52of recovering the money for the victims and that you know still bothers me today
51:57alan stanford is now 66 years old and he will end his life in a prison in florida
52:04his story is rarely in the media these days and yet it was the second largest ponzi scheme in history
52:13this is a story that that hasn't been told that's not getting enough attention
52:17because it's lived in the shadow of bernie madoff and it's a it's a real american tragedy you know
52:23you know there's so many victims and it's put so many people in such a bad place and the u.s
52:29government did a terrible job of monitoring it it seemed to me that the entire very sophisticated
52:36wall street in american systems of finance and law banking had all conspired to let him happen
52:44and so i think the alan stanford story is a story of the complete failure of the american
52:51financial system people are always looking for a better return so when there's someone dangling that
52:56carrot which was alan stanford people bite and i think it was a combination of those things ponzi
53:02skis have been around forever you know they're going to still continue uh and are normally done by
53:08people that are smart charming and uh and organized and know how to do it true to himself alan stanford
53:17is still trying to write his own myth on his own he's written a case review request running to 300 pages
53:27and he's published a book written by a fellow detainee
53:30its subject is an innocent man who was broken by being thrown in prison
53:38so
Recomendado
55:58
|
A Seguir
50:54
55:07
52:55
31:23
1:31
3:52
30:35
31:15
2:30
59:28
59:30
1:24:24
52:14
51:23
1:30:49
59:41
59:26
Seja a primeira pessoa a comentar