Allen Stanford - Career

Career

Stanford started in business in Waco, Texas, opening a bodybuilding gym that failed. His first success in business came from speculating in real estate in Houston after the Texan oil bubble burst in the early 1980s; his partner in this venture was his father, James: the two men made a fortune in the 1980s, buying up depressed real estate and selling it years later as the market recovered. After his father retired in 1993, Stanford took control of a company with 500 employees.

Stanford moved to the Caribbean in the 1980s, first to Montserrat, then to Antigua. With Stanford Finance, he started a bank on the island of Montserrat in 1985, Guardian International Bank; he moved it to Antigua during a British crackdown on Montserrat's offshore-banking industry in the 1980s, renaming it Stanford International Bank, an affiliate of Stanford Financial.

Early in 2007, Stanford and Baldwin Spencer, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda and formerly an ally, began verbally feuding in public.

In 2009, Antigua's Financial Services Regulatory Commission named a British firm, Vantis Business Recovery Services, the receiver for Stanford International Bank and Stanford Trust Company, the Associated Press reported.

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