ST. JOHN'S, Antigua — Panicky depositors were turned away from Stanford International Bank and some of its Latin American affiliates Wednesday, unable to withdraw their money after U.S. regulators accused Texas financier R. Allen Stanford of perpetrating an $8 billion fraud against his companies' investors.
Some customers arrived in Antigua by private jet and were driven up the lushly landscaped driveway of the bank's headquarters, only to be told that all assets have been frozen pending an investigation by Antiguan banking regulators.
"I don't know what to think. I have my life savings here," said Reinaldo Pinto Ramos, 48, a Venezuelan software firm owner who flew in by chartered plane from Caracas on Wednesday with five other investors to check on their accounts. "We're waiting to see some light."
Banking regulators and politicians around the region are scrambling to contain the damage after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against the billionaire on Tuesday. Regional Director Rose Romero of the SEC's Fort Worth office called it a "fraud of shocking magnitude that has spread its tentacles throughout the world."
Stanford, 58, is a larger-than-life figure in the Caribbean, using his personal fortune — estimated at $2.2 billion by Forbes magazine — to bankroll public works and sports teams. He also is a major player in U.S. politics, personally donating nearly $1 million, mostly to Democrats. At 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, he towered over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while giving her a warm hug at the Democratic National Convention last year.
He owns a home in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and operates businesses from Houston to Miami and Switzerland to Antigua, where the government knighted him in 2006 in recognition of his economic influence and charity work.
U.S. regulators have accused Stanford, two other executives and three of their companies of luring investors with promises of "improbable and unsubstantiated" high returns on certificates of deposit and other investments.
Many details about the alleged fraud remain unclear, but the SEC alleges a pattern of secrecy, including a failure to disclose the bank's exposure to losses in money manager Bernard Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme.
The SEC said no one but Stanford and James M. Davis of Baldwyn, Miss., the Antigua-based bank's chief financial officer, know where most of depositors' cash is invested, and both men have failed to cooperate with investigators. "Approximately 90 percent of SIB's claimed investment portfolio resides in a 'black box' shielded from any independent oversight," the SEC said in its complaint.
Stanford's companies also have been scrutinized in recent years over concerns that they were laundering drug money, according to a U.S. official familiar with the case. DEA, FBI and Homeland Security investigators often launch such inquiries when offshore banks move lots of money, and there is no indication that money laundering charges are being prepared, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the inquiry.
Stanford wasn't talking Wednesday and a company Web site directed inquiries to the SEC. But in an e-mail to his employees last week, the billionaire said his company was cooperating with the probe, and vowed to "fight with every breath to continue to uphold our good name and continue the legacy we have built together."
A federal judge appointed a receiver to identify and protect Stanford's assets worldwide, including about $8 billion managed by the bank, which has affiliates in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.
Also frozen were assets of Houston-based Stanford Capital Management and Stanford Group Company, which has 29 brokerage offices around the U.S.