(Antigua Sun) Chairman of the Antigua Labour Party Gaston Browne said efforts by a group of United States investors to sue the local government over the Sir Allen Stanford matter is out of line.
“That case is not a justifiable one, the investors had a private contract with Stanford, they don’t have any contractual agreement between themselves and the government and for them now to look for the government to pay them is absolute nonsense.”
The Stanford Victims Coalition and the law firm Morgenstern & Blue sent a letter on Friday to over 50 US senators and congressmen asking them to block Antigua from receiving any funding from the IMF, this according to a report in another news medium.
According to the article, Antigua’s involvement in the alleged US$7.2 billion Stanford International Bank scandal is one example of the country’s alleged history of corruption.
In the article, it is alleged that this fraud led to the losses of life’s savings belonging to 28,000 victims from around the world, it also indicated that the country is accused of profiting from its relationship with Stanford for many years and now it has taken steps to expropriate properties that were purchased with up to US$1 billion of investors funds.
Browne said the government of Antigua and Barbuda should not be on the losing end of this debacle, as the government did not have any contractual agreement with the investors.
He, however, added that the Antiguan government should not have acquired those real estate properties belonging to Sir Allen in the wholesale manner in which they did as forewarned by the opposition party.
“We had said to them for instance when we went to Parliament that if there were strategic assets like around the airport that they needed to acquire for expansion and soon, that would be satisfactory, but for them to acquire other assets which evidently is of no particular interest to the development of Antigua and Barbuda is creating a liability for the government.”
The Party chairman said those assets were part of the receivership estate and should have been shared among the creditors.
Efforts to contact Minister of Finance Harold Lovell for comment proved futile as he was engaged in a series of meetings.
