Allen Stanford’s rare interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from his cell at the high-security jail in Florida last week revived mixed memories of the Texan billionaire’s involvement in West Indies cricket.
It ended in 2009 with his imprisonment for an unlikely 110 years on charges by the United States’ Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) of fraud, conspiracy and obstruction, most of it connected to his multi-million dollar T20 tournaments in Antigua, one of the bases for his financial empire.
In the interview, he spoke of his ‘hell’ in jail, of the severe beatings by inmates to which he was initially subjected, verified by the widely circulated images of his bloodied face as he was stretchered to hospital. It was physical degradation to follow the initial shame as he was led to his cell by three female guards, handcuffed and wearing the familiar orange garb of American criminals.
Far from sounding a broken man, Stanford was defiant. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he asserted. “Will I apologise? No. Mark my words…I am going to walk out of these doors a free man.”
He boasted that he had been ‘one of the wealthiest men on the planet’ who needed his six jets to fly between his offices in 14 countries.
Knowing Stanford through day-to-day contact as part of the international tv panel employed to commentate on his matches that were transmitted live throughout the Caribbean and beyond, such lack of remorse for those who
