“It’s been like a nightmare, a debilitating nightmare,” Robert Allen Stanford says during a CNBC interview that aired today regarding the breakdown of Stanford Financial Group after allegations by the SEC of a Ponzi scheme. In the 30-minute video, which can be seen here, Stanford denies claims that he was using later investors’ cash to pay out dividends on earlier investors’ certificates of deposits.
“There are some things that I found out in a February meeting in Miami” that he was instructed by his counsel not to discuss, Stanford says. He continues to blame the SEC, saying their accusations against him are a “knee-jerk” reaction to the Bernard Madoff scandal. “They needed somebody to make an example out of.”
Stanford’s interview comes one day after the court ruled to deny a request against the receivership, requesting the release of certain accounts. Any remaining accounts that have not been recommended for release by the Stanford receiver Ralph Janvey are those that either contain the CDs in question or were funded with the proceeds from fraudulent CDs. Read the court’s ruling here.—Olivia Watkins
