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Remember the Cannon story "Pirates of the Carribean"? Here's the update:

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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-24-09 01:35 PM
Original message
Remember the Cannon story "Pirates of the Carribean"? Here's the update:
(Cannon's tone can be really unpleasant but he puts together the right facts.)


Pirates of the Caribbean: Stanford, drugs and the CIA (updated)

So far, this blog has neglected our nation's most infamous lost-and-found Texan, Sir Allen Stanford. You've probably read about him elsewhere, but you may not know the juicier details -- by which I mean the narco stuff and the CIA stuff.

Yes, he's American, and yes, that really is his name. Before taking French leave (the FBI caught up with him at his girlfriend's home), he bilked investors of some $8 billion. He did this, in part, by establishing Stanford International Bank, run by family members and cronies and located in the Caribbean.

According to the SEC, the bank sold approximately $8bn worth of certificates of deposit to investors, promising "improbable and unsubstantiated high interest rates"

You may remember an old adage, oft-heard during the S&L debacle: The best way to rob a bank is to own one. His shennanigans may cause a region-wide upheaval:

"The fallout threatens catastrophic and immediate consequences" for the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, said Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer. It also could rattle the economies of smaller nations throughout the region.

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2009/02/pirates-of-caribbean-stanford-drugs-and.html
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-24-09 01:50 PM
Response to Original message
1. Whoa! Sure glad to have read this one. Very, VERY interesting.
It's going to be very important they pursue this investigation through to the end, and totally expose it. What are the chances this is going to happen, anyway?

Thanks for sharing this information.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-24-09 01:56 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. I had TOTALLY forgotten that it was Stanford that was raided.
Small world, no?

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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-24-09 02:07 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Just saw this link from your article: Is Allen Stanford An Asset Of The CIA?
Is Allen Stanford An Asset Of The CIA?
Joe Weisenthal|Feb. 18, 2009, 2:57 PM
http://www.businessinsider.com/is-allen-stanford-a-cia-asset-2009-2


Which links this article:

Sir Allen Stanford in spotlight over CIA spying row with Venezuela
Sir Allen Stanford, the Texan billionaire who organised the controversial $20 million tournament which split the world of cricket, is now at the centre of an international spying row, it can be revealed.

By Patrick Sawer
Last Updated: 4:40PM GMT 09 Nov 2008

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/twenty20/3406293/Sir-Allen-Stanford-in-spotlight-over-CIA-spying-row-Cricket.html

~~~~~~~~~~

Wish we could get an oversight on this story right NOW. Looks like Chavez was onto something in it a long time ago.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-24-09 02:08 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. I sent a little note to Greg Palast -- he likes these stories.
May be worth dropping one to Amy's people, too, or to Greenwald or even Jeremy Scahill?
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-24-09 02:36 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. It's going to need a lot of people running things down, for sure.
So many angles. It will be a whopper if someone finally has the man/woman power to nail it, and if they don't get assassinated first. Reporters get disappeared on powerful stories, so the odds are probably better with larger groups working together on them.

I'm not too sure how information's going to be uncovered from people who are determined we never find out! It'd be fantastic if someone drug this story out into the daylight, anyway.
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ronnie624 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-26-09 12:17 PM
Response to Reply #3
9. Some very interesting reading,
Edited on Thu Feb-26-09 12:17 PM by ronnie624
with links to many sources.

Stanford also has been a major political player in the U.S., where some congressmen quickly announced they would donate his campaign contributions to charity.

The Stanford Financial Group, through its political action committee and employees, has contributed $2.4 million to political candidates, parties and committees in the U.S. since 1989, with nearly two-thirds going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that tracks campaign spending.

Most of that cash flowed during the 2002 election cycle, when Congress was debating a financial services antifraud bill that would have linked the databases of state and federal banking, securities and insurance regulators. The bill ultimately died in the Senate, where the biggest recipients have been Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. ($45,900); Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. ($28,150); Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. ($27,500); and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas ($19,700). Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas also received $41,375.


(All during a period of time when there were numerous investigations by a variety of law enforcement agencies, worldwide, and none of these powerful U.S. politicians were aware of it.)
:eyes:

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090218/ap_on_bi_ge/cb_antigua_stanford_7>

Although not directly related to this topic, this will make interesting reading (it was linked in the OP's article):

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house/intel/ic21/ic21001.html>

Lots of reading to do.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-26-09 02:25 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. It would be provident if the IC21 DID undergo some important change, wouldn't it?
Almost afraid to hope.

Lots of information there in the link you shared on the staff study. Hope to be able to grasp some part of it.

Got curious reading your first link to know where Antigua is from Venezuela, had to go look it up:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_bKXlng-gpg0/RqBajUlRymI/AAAAAAAABYw/nfFhKqOweVE/s400/map-antigua.jpg


Looks conveniently close to those who've got the time to invest in setting up their other banking, doesn't it?

Looks as if the guy did take advantage of some very LOW hanging fruit among the Congress critters. I always thought Bill Nelson was far more like a Republican, anyway. Dodd? I'm somewhat surprised about that guy. Wouldn't have thought he'd go for it.

Hope we have a lot more to find out about this guy, until he's finally without secrets.
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ronnie624 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Feb-28-09 01:15 AM
Response to Reply #10
11. I just noticed that I inadvertently posted the wrong link to the IC study.
Here is the correct one:

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house/intel/ic21/ic21_toc.html>

Oops. Sorry about that.

:blush:
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Feb-24-09 08:55 PM
Response to Original message
6. oh, my, my, my! Wouldn't you like to know what Venezuelan intelligence found there!
As I recall--something that passed before my eyes about a week ago--Chavez moved swiftly to protect Venezuelan and other South American investors, when this Stanford shit hit the fan. Oh, yes, I think it was at BoRev.net. They were mocking the rich, fascist Venezuelans, who were saying that Chavez drove them to put their money in off-shore accounts in Stanford's care because of socialism or something. That's like, ya know, Bushwhacks blaming Obama for the Bushwhack-instigated Financial 9/11 they pulled off in September. You just want to tear your hair out with the insanity of such statements. They are beyond George Orwell and well into Lewis Carroll (nutso Red Queen demands that all the white roses be painted RED!).

Anyway, somewhere in there, maybe at a link, I picked up that Chavez--having cash reserves to do so, because of his government's excellent management of Venezuela's economy--was covering their deposits. Which some of them certainly did not deserve. They were no doubt looking not to pay their taxes or other crimes. Some might have been innocent, however--and there were a lot of savers/investors, as I recall, in five or six countries. It was basically the idea of the FDIC--guaranteeing their deposits. And, come to think of it, it was probably only the loudmouth ones, the rightwingers who blamed Chavez for their own foolish investments--they're the only ones who get press.

So-o-o-o, what could the Bushwhack CIA have been up to in Venezuela, late last year--that they were running through Stanford? A lot of possibilities, beginning with the Stanford scam itself--basically another pyramid scheme (offering impossibly high returns on investments to rake in the doe, then skipping out), like the one that got exposed around the same time in Colombia, as a matter of fact, and like the one here, which was a pyramid scheme writ very, very, very, VERY large. Could have been an effort to make sure that Venezuela got hit hard, too--a destabilization hit, preparatory to something else. Same time period: The Bushwhacks were funding and organizing fascist rioters and murderers in Bolivia, trying to destabilize and topple Evo Morales' government. Rafael Correa said it was a three-country plot (Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador). (Also, remember, early in 2008, Correa had to purge some CIA operatives from his military--after that U.S./Colombia-instigated almost war between Colombia and Ecuador.) So, Stanford may have been in the middle of this three-country plot, funneling the money around.

Then there was the later incident of the Venezuelan fascist opposition meeting a Bushwhack diplomat in Puerto Rico, seeking $3 million to defeat the term limits referendum. I wonder if that was Stanford-run money. Somewhere in here, Venezuela's intelligence agency got onto Stanford and raided his offices. That raid was more than likely about the CIA running money through Stanford to coup plotters. They had to meet in Puerto Rico, to arrange it, because...

...Morales threw the U.S. ambassador out of Bolivia, in September, and Chavez did the same in Venezuela, for that murderous meddling in Bolivia--and, on Chavez's part, we now know, for running CIA ops through Stanford's bank. That solves one mystery. They met in Puerto Rico because there was no U.S. ambassador in Caracas to broker the deal and release the money.

With Obama on a path to win the election here, the Bushwhack CIA (and the DEA, in Bolivia) would have had some very serious cleaning up to do. This would likely have involved their drug trafficking, their weapons trafficking, assassination plots and coup plots, as well as all the funding. I'm thinking of that USAID-trained rightwing student, likely a CIA operative, who was running big scams in Zulia--involving student bus passes but probably also drugs (I think he had a million dollars in his bank account)--who got shot in a drive-by shooting. Did their tidying up include murder? Is some of the high murder rate in Venezuela due to the CIA eliminating operatives who knew too much, or had become too independent or too expensive, or too blabby, and also witnesses and potential whistleblowers--as they got ready for a new regime in the White House? (It would be interesting to know if that student's money was in Stanford's bank.)

I think what this is adding up to is the Bolivarians (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador) and their allies (Brazil, Argentina, Chile) busted the Bushwhack CIA, and defeated that 3-country plot, back then, in September. And with the CIA's banker busted, whatever ops the Bushwhacks (in a private capacity) or the Obama administration are running would now have to be very covert.

This may explain something else that puzzled me at the time: Colombia voted with the others, as a member of UNASUR, to make UNASUR's action with regard to the Bushwhack coup attempt in Bolivia unanimous. Colombia is a U.S./Bush Cartel client state. But with Chavez and the others onto the CIA's laundered drug money (via the Stanford raid), Bush buddy Uribe could be pressured to vote yea, against U.S./Bushwhack interests. Uribe is former Medellin Cartel, and likely very dirty on drug money. Right now, I can't remember if there were Colombian investors in Stanford. I also don't have a good timeline for these events. I'm just guessing at the sequence. (Did the Stanford bust come first, then throwing the U.S. ambassadors out of Bolivia and Venezuela, etc.?).

In any case, a whole new dimension to the events of the last year in South America opens up with this Stanford/CIA business. Also, we may now have a further clue as to how the Bolivian coup was defeated; how unanimity was achieved, not just with colombia, but also with centrist players like Batchelet who led the UNASUR response. (She doesn't any more CIA bullshit in her country, to be sure!); and how many things occurred, that were victories for the new leftist leaders. They got onto Stanford and how the money was being laundered and distributed, and to whom. It may explain fascist parties in the three countries standing down, on coup activities, with three important Constitutional votes occurring in the three targeted countries (how and why those votes went as smoothly as they did).

So maybe the situation now is that the left has the goods on the right--on all kinds of illegal and traitorous activities. And, finally, it may explain that absurd CIA "suitcase full of money" caper out of Miami, with the Bushbot U.S. attorney trying to sully Chavez as dirty. They were preparing for potential exposure of all this, and were devising a counter-narrative.

Sorry to indulge in such a long speculation, but the Stanford connection is looking like the "eye of the storm," around which all else swirls.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-25-09 02:07 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. That 33 year old Zulia "student" who got killed was Julio Soto. A local newspaper there
started investigating him, and the "kids" from his political group started a violent demostration against the newspaper. I lost track of how that went, but it was very much as you'd expect.

The official word on this character completely disappeared after they wrung as much political attention from it they could manage, staging their ultra-goofy pretentious mock-outrage funeral for the guy, with a pompous little parade by his comrades. The moment it was revealed the search led to an ENORMOUS bank account, wildly out of proportion with anything people would EVER expect to see connected to a simply college student, and then the search led to stolen cars, narcotrafficking, and a black market sales in the Venezuelan government's student bus passes created to make transportation more affordable for STUDENTS, the lights just went out on the guy. No more information whatsoever, although the opposition did peddle his name in Europe during some event, attempting to use him as an example of Chavez's government's suppression of dissent! Yep. They apparently assumed no one in Europe had bothered to know anything about Julio Soto, and wouldn't know they were being told lies directly by a group of people who clearly can't get anywhere with the TRUTH!

Someone just turned out the light on media coverage of the skinhead "dissident," (and wealthy criminal) Julio Soto.
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-25-09 04:07 PM
Response to Original message
8. Related story: Venezuela freezes Stanford bank board assets
Venezuela freezes Stanford bank board assets
FABIOLA SANCHEZ, Associated Press Writer
February 25, 2009 12:54 PM

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - A Venezuelan court has frozen the assets of board members who headed a bank controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Venezuela's government last week seized temporary control of Stanford Bank SA after panicked withdrawals on news of U.S. fraud charges against Stanford and three of his companies.

Though part of the Texas billionaire's Antigua-based empire, the Venezuelan bank is not named in the fraud complaint by U.S. regulators.

The court in Caracas blocked bank accounts of the eight board members and put a hold on their property at the request of a special prosecutor leading an investigation in Venezuela. A court last week barred the outgoing board members from leaving the country.

More:
http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=BUSINESS&ID=565532504640326138

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