Antigua fires regulator accused of helping fraud

ST. JOHN'S, Antigua -- Antigua and Barbuda fired its chief financial regulator Tuesday night, four days after U.S. prosecutors charged that he accepted more than $100,000 in bribes to help Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford with an alleged $7 billion swindle.

Announcing the Cabinet decision in a brief statement, Attorney General Justin Simon said the government accepted the recommendation of the country's Financial Services Regulatory Commission that Leroy King "be dismissed from the commission with immediate effect."

Stanford was indicted Friday on U.S. charges that his tropical banking empire was really just a Ponzi scheme built on lies and bribery. The U.S. Justice Department announced charges against Stanford and six others - including King - who allegedly helped the tycoon run the alleged fraud.

Prosecutors say King, who was the Caribbean islands' top regulator, should have caught the fraud but instead took bribes to let it continue. He was charged with conspiracy to obstruct an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

King, contacted Tuesday before Simon's announcement, said he did not wish to make any comment about the charges.

Simon and other government officials in Antigua did not immediately return calls after the brief written statement was released late Tuesday.

The indictment unsealed Friday in Houston charged that Stanford and other executives at his firm falsely claimed to have grown $1.2 billion in assets in 2001 to roughly $8.5 billion by the end of 2008. Investigators say that in reality, Stanford diverted more than $1.6 billion in personal loans to himself.

Court papers charge Stanford, who denies wrongdoing, and top executives of orchestrating the fraud by advising clients to buy certificates of deposit from the Antigua-based Stanford International Bank. His firm is thought to have had roughly 30,000 investors.

Stanford's Antigua enterprises also include a newspaper, two restaurants, a development company and the ornately landscaped Stanford cricket grounds, where he shook up the staid world of professional cricket last year by bankrolling the purse in a $20 million winner-take-all match.