Stanford Update: Another $143 Mil Found

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March 02, 2009 1:40 PM

UK investigators have located more than $143 million in assets linked to accused fraudster R. Allen Stanford and his financial empire, the British Daily Mail reports.

Add that to the $250 million U.S. authorities claim to have found, and that makes. . . maybe five percent of the $6 billion believed missing from Stanford’s companies.  Not surprisingly, Ralph Janvey, the court-appointed official overseeing the firms says he has a "liquidity crisis" on his hands.  That might explain why he's having trouble making the company payroll.

Investigators have a little longer to search for the missing cash, if it exists: a judge Monday agreed to extend another 10 days a temporary restraining order freezing assets connected to Stanford’s empire or its top three executives.

While government lawyers have convinced multiple former Stanford executives to cooperate with their probe, Stanford’s right-hand man turned them down, Bloomberg reported today.  James Davis took the fifth in filings relating to a civil suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The feds allege Stanford and Davis were part of a billion-dollar “Ponzi scheme.”

Laura Pendergrest-Holt, believed to be the third key player in Stanford’s operation, is out on bail, after being criminally charged with obstructing justice last week.  Her lawyer, Dan Cogdell, says she’s innocent.

But a lawyer who accompanied Pendergest-Holt to the meeting with SEC lawyers in which she allegedly gave bogus testimony withdrew from the matter the day after, according to the New York Times.  The lawyer, Thomas V. Sjoblom, “disavowed all previous oral and written representations he had made to the S.E.C. on behalf of the firm,” the paper reported.