Amid all this talk of sus­pi­cions about Allen Stan­ford and his method of busi­ness — many people might be ask­ing them­selves, who knew? Where was the media all this time? Let’s whistle back through the archives ten years…

From the Wash­ing­ton Post (Octo­ber 11, 1999):

It star­ted when the United States two years ago began pres­sur­ing Anti­gua to tighten reg­u­la­tion of its off­shore fin­an­cial industry. Prime Min­is­ter Lester Bird asked Stan­ford, a per­sonal friend, to under­take the task.

Stan­ford, 49, accep­ted and even agreed to pay for the ser­vices of a group of U.S. experts to help rewrite laws and cre­ate a board, with him­self as the pres­id­ent, to over­see the changes.

Over 18 months, new laws to con­trol money laun­der­ing were passed. One pro­hib­ited cash depos­its in off­shore banks, and another increased the min­imum amount of cap­ital needed to open a bank from $1 mil­lion to $5 mil­lion. Five of the nation’s 54 off­shore banks were shut, and another 20 are under review, includ­ing sev­eral Rus­sian banks that had attrac­ted inter­na­tional scru­tiny. “Know your cus­tomer” laws were strengthened. The Inter­na­tional Fin­an­cial Sec­tor Author­ity (IFSA) was cre­ated to over­see off­shore activities.

“I have no doubt we have the best anti-money-laundering laws in the world,” said Patrick O’Brien, a former cus­toms agent recruited by Stan­ford to write the laws. “We have things in there even the United States doesn’t have.”

But Antigua’s actions, instead of draw­ing praise from U.S. offi­cials, brought down Washington’s wrath. On April 7, the Treas­ury Depart­ment issued a rare advis­ory, urging “enhanced scru­tiny” of all fin­an­cial trans­ac­tions through Antigua.

In a let­ter to Bird, the Treas­ury Depart­ment said Anti­gua had “weakened its anti-money laun­der­ing laws to the point [that] they are now sig­ni­fic­antly below inter­na­tional stand­ards, mak­ing Anti­gua more vul­ner­able to money laun­der­ing.” The Brit­ish issued a sim­ilar advis­ory a few days later.

Ah, so he helped re-write the bank­ing laws in a tiny Carib­bean island and then the US and UK gov­ern­ments both warned that the changes had made the place a haven for money laun­der­ers. Hmmm.

Still, he seemed like a nice chap. Take this rather less crit­ical piece from Cox News Ser­vice (June 17, 1999):

Tall and friendly, with a Texas drawl to match, the 49-year-old Stan­ford made his money in the early 1980s build­ing houses in Hou­s­ton. One neigh­bor­hood there, Stan­ford Oaks, still bears his name.

In the mid-1980s Stan­ford set up his first bank in the Carib­bean — where he had once taught scuba diving — so that his home­buy­ers might have a place to deposit their escrows.

He opened his bank in Anti­gua in 1985. And today Stan­ford, who flies in and out of this island in a private jet, is like this island’s own Henry Pot­ter, the char­ac­ter from It’s a Won­der­ful Life — only a kinder, gentler ver­sion — in that he seems to have his hands in almost every pie.

Pot­ter comes in sixth in the top 50 movie vil­lains of all time, so per­haps it’s not the most flat­ter­ing of com­par­is­ons, but bur­ied in the end of the piece is this nugget:

[P]rivately, U.S. offi­cials con­tinue to express sus­pi­cion over Antigua’s efforts, say­ing the island has a poor track record when it comes to keep­ing prom­ises and cooper­at­ing with U.S. invest­ig­at­ors in cases of sus­pec­ted money laundering.

They also express sus­pi­cion when it comes to Stan­ford and his influ­ence on the Anti­guan gov­ern­ment even though no one will pin­point any wrongdoing.

Maybe lights should start flash­ing on the page…

Then again there’s ‘Banker draw­ing scru­tiny; Houstonian’s Anti­gua empire raises ques­tions’ from the Hou­s­ton Chron­icle (July 16, 2000). The piece reveals some of the former US offi­cials Stan­ford brought in from the DEA, FBI and US Customs:

Prime Min­is­ter Bird asked Stan­ford in 1996 to spear­head an effort to revise Antigua’s bank­ing laws, clean up the off­shore sec­tor and expand the industry.

At Stanford’s urging, Bird named Stanford’s attor­ney, Car­los Lou­miet, an inter­na­tional law and bank­ing expert, to a spe­cial advis­ory board. The panel included former offi­cials from the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion, the Fed­eral Bur­eau of Invest­ig­a­tion and U.S. Customs.

Two other mem­bers of Loumiet’s firm, includ­ing Pat O’Brien, a former U.S. Cus­toms spe­cial agent for South Flor­ida, joined the effort.

Still, it’s largely sym­path­etic, reflect­ing a view that the big United States gov­ern­ment is look­ing to crush little Antigua’s efforts to become an inter­na­tional bank­ing centre.

In an attempt to head off a row with the United States, Anti­gua sent a del­eg­a­tion — led by O’Brien — to Wash­ing­ton. It met with Jonathan Winer, then-head of the State Department’s Bur­eau for Inter­na­tional Nar­cot­ics and Law Enforce­ment Affairs. U.S. offi­cials later com­plained that the del­eg­a­tion con­sisted mostly of indi­vidu­als “who acknow­ledged they had been paid by a private-sector interest.”

Winer’s office issued a report a few weeks after the meet­ing, call­ing Anti­gua and Bar­buda “one of the most attract­ive fin­an­cial cen­ters in the Carib­bean for money launderers.”

Later, State Depart­ment offi­cials were more expli­cit in their accus­a­tions: “Indi­vidu­als sus­pec­ted of involve­ment in money laun­der­ing and other illi­cit eco­nomic activ­it­ies used their con­sid­er­able fin­an­cial influ­ence to weaken Antigua’s anti-money laun­der­ing legis­la­tion,” the depart­ment noted in a report issued earlier this year.

The changes “under­mined the abil­ity of law enforce­ment to invest­ig­ate and pro­sec­ute fin­an­cial crimes,” the report said.

The State Depart­ment did not name the indi­vidu­als it was refer­ring to…

And the Chron­icle obli­gingly found someone will­ing to cast doubt on the motives of the State Department:

Charles Intri­ago, pub­lisher of the Miami news­let­ter Money Laun­der­ing Alert, said Winer and other State Depart­ment offi­cials “seemed to go out of their way to high­light the role Stan­ford plays on that island.”

“People seem to have — like Winer — an obsess­ive interest in this guy and come up empty-handed,” Intri­ago said.

And just how did Stan­ford pro­tect his interests against these bur­eau­cratic sharks? Back to the Chron­icle (March 6, 2002) again and ‘Hou­s­ton Owner of Off­shore Bank Learns Value of ‘Soft Money’ in Washington’:

Off­shore bank owner R. Allen Stan­ford and his Hou­s­ton firm were the largest con­trib­ut­ors to a fund-raising group con­trolled by Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Tom Daschle at a time when law­makers were con­sid­er­ing bills to clamp down on money laun­der­ing, a watch­dog group reported.

Stan­ford, owner of the largest off­shore bank on the tiny Carib­bean island of Anti­gua, and his Stan­ford Fin­an­cial Group had long shied away from Wash­ing­ton politics.

But after being forced to wrestle with the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion to pro­tect his off­shore bank­ing busi­ness, Stan­ford waded into the Wash­ing­ton polit­ical process.

Stan­ford and his firm donated $448,000 in unreg­u­lated, “soft money” con­tri­bu­tions between July 1, 2000, and June 30, 2001, accord­ing to a study by con­sumer act­iv­ist Ralph Nader’s Pub­lic Citizen.

So ten years ago, any­one will­ing to listen could hear the con­cerns that were raised by some gov­ern­ment agen­cies about Allen Stanford’s method of busi­ness. They could learn about his track record of pay­outs to politi­cians and his con­flicts of interests and his per­sonal inter­ven­tion in the bank­ing reg­u­la­tion of Antigua.

But if you wanted to believe that he was a lov­able cham­pion of island under­dogs — a kind­lier, cud­dlier Henry Pot­ter de nos jours — then Stanford’s banks were open for your busi­ness. Which doesn’t make you lazy, stu­pid, or greedy…