HOUSTON, (Reuters) – Allen Stanford spent a quarter of a million dollars at a Las Vegas casino and now U.S. regulators want to know whether the spree violated a court-ordered asset freeze, an allegation the Texas financier hotly disputes, court filings show.
Stanford wrote checks totaling $258,480 to the Bellagio Hotel & Casino, MGM Mirage’s swanky hotel on the Vegas Strip, according to a filing on Monday with federal court in Dallas by lawyers from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
But Stanford’s lawyers requested copies of the checks and determined that they covered markers, or a line of credit from the casino, from a visit a month before the freeze order in the case, court papers filed on Friday said.
In fact, Stanford was in Virginia on Feb. 19, where agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation served him with the SEC’s formal complaint, his lawyers said in the filing yesterday.
The checks, signed by Stanford, were dated Feb. 19, or two days after a court-appointed receiver seized the billionaire’s businesses and assets, according to the SEC’s court documents.
The government’s probe was disclosed in a footnote to a document the SEC filed in opposition to the flamboyant businessman and sports patron’s request to have $10 million freed so he could pay his lawyers.
A Houston-based lawyer for Stanford was not immediately available to comment. A spokesman for the SEC was not immediately available to comment.
A judge has yet to rule on the legal fees matter.
“That is not justice,” Stanford’s lawyers told the judge in a filing yesterday, referring to the SEC’s attempt to bar him from access to his funds to pay his lawyers. “Justice permits Allen Stanford to effectively defend himself.”
Stanford — along with two colleagues and three of his companies — faces civil charges for a scheme the government said involves high-yield certificates of deposit issued by his Stanford International Bank in Antigua.
Neither court filing specified exactly how Stanford spent the money at the Bellagio, but a recent tour of his huge and luxurious personal office in Houston revealed he is at least a fan of the Bellagio’s house show featuring acrobats and synchronized swimming.
On Stanford’s massive desk that sat opposite a saltwater tank once filled with expensive and exotic fish sat a CD of music from Cirque du Soleil’s show “O.”
