By Anna Driver
HOUSTON (Reuters) – Allen Stanford, charged with a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, sought to have a Antiguan regulator with oversight of his offshore bank dismissed after she rejected a number of the Texas financier’s overtures to work together, she testified on Monday.
Prosecutors say Stanford bilked investors in more than 100 countries through the sale of fraudulent certificates of deposit from his offshore bank in Antigua.
“I’m not a yes person,” said Althea Crick, who is chairman of the board of Antigua’s Financial Services Regulatory Commission.
“I don’t rubber stamp,” she testified she told Stanford after a 1998 meeting where he asked that she report to him and a local business committee.
Crick described a number of tense meetings and phone calls where she said she stood up to the former billionaire, refusing to let him take part in the regulatory process.
“It reminds me of a saying that we have at home – the rat being put in charge of the cheese,” Crick said.
Stanford, who prosecutors said successfully bribed his Antiguan auditor and another island regulator, eventually went to Antigua’s prime minister to have Crick dismissed from her job.
Leroy King, who replaced Crick in 2002, is accused of taking
Read More from the Article Source: Full Article
