|  | | 2009 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
New Headache for Greenberg Traurig: The Allen Stanford Scandal
Brian Baxter
The American Lawyer. October 6, 2009
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EXCERPT: […] As if Greenberg Traurig hasn't had enough trouble over the past several years, a report this past weekend in the Miami Herald asks whether several current and former firm partners aided R. Allen Stanford in running his alleged $7 billion Ponzi scheme. According to the Herald, lawyers from the firm helped Stanford set up a special trust in the late nineties in Miami that allowed millions in assets to be moved offshore without making any disclosures to the federal government. Stanford also turned to Greenberg lawyers to draft changes to the Caribbean island's banking system, the Herald reports. The move came after the U.S. Department of the Treasury considered imposing tough restrictions on financial institutions operating out of Antigua following a series of money laundering investigations in the late nineties. Stanford's proposed changes ultimately became law. Passed in 1998, the legislation created a regulatory agency effectively controlled by Stanford, who was given a position as a board member. Even after Stanford stepped down from the board, the Herald reports he used the agency's powers to avoid oversight and stifle competition from other offshore investment institutions. The Greenberg partners named in the Herald story are Patrick O'Brien, a former U.S. Customs chief now based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Carlos Loumiet, who left the firm in 2001 and took Stanford's business with him to Hunton & Williams. Another Greenberg lawyer, Yolanda Suarez, left the firm to become Stanford's in-house legal counsel and chief of staff. This isn't the first time that Loumiet's name has been linked to scandal. In June 2008 a federal judge ruled that there was no evidence that Loumiet helped cover up a fraud at now defunct Hamilton Bank -- a Loumiet client while he was at Greenberg. |
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