TEXAS, United States – (CMC) – Jurors in the criminal trial of disgraced cricket financier Allen Stanford are yet to reach a verdict after deliberating for two days.
The four-woman, eight-man jury will resume deliberations tomorrow in US Federal District Court after receiving the case on Wednesday. Stanford, 61, is accused of perpetrating a US$7 billion Ponzi scheme involving his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank (SIB).
The Texan bankrolled the multi-million dollar Stanford Twenty20 tournament for several years in the Caribbean, in what was the first real lucrative professional cricket league in the region.
Stanford’s tentacles also stretched to the England and Wales Cricket Board with whom he partnered to stage the Stanford Super Series where England would play a West Indies side branded as the Stanford Superstars in several US$20 million winner-take-all games.
However, the project collapsed after Stanford was arrested and charged with 14 counts in the indictment including wire fraud and conspiracy in 2009.
If the jurors convict Stanford on any of the 14 counts, they will be asked to determine whether the US government may seize 31 U.S. properties that belonged to his companies.
Most of Stanford’s personal assets and those of his companies are under the control of a receiver appointed when the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil fraud suit against Stanford on February 17, 2009.
Stanford and some of his former top officials are accused of misleading investors in high-yield certificates of deposit (CDs) issued by SIB.
Former Stanford chief financial officer, James Davis, the US government’s key witness, told jurors that CD purchasers were told their money went into conventional, conservative investments.
But, in reality, Davis said investors’ money financed Stanford’s lavish lifestyle and businesses. Davis had pleaded guilty to three felony counts in a plea agreement with prosecutors.
Stanford’s defence team, however, argued during the six-week trial that SIB was in the midst of a consolidation and would be solvent today if the US government had not shut it down in February 2009.
Stanford, who did not take the stand in his own defence, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted on most counts.