Bush
Crime Family tied to Stanford Ponzi Scheme
Where
is the U.S Justice Department?
Breaking News Friday July 30, 2010
Wayne Madsen Report:
July 30 -August 1, 2010
Bush's
Ambassador to eastern Caribbean protected Stanford operations
Mary K. Ourisman, the
Texas-born socialite wife of Maryland car dealer Mandy Ourisman,
helped provide diplomatic and legal cover for jailed former
Stanford International
Bank chief Allen Stanford, according to Stanford insiders who spoke to WMR. Mary Ourisman was
George W. Bush's ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean States, which
include Antigua and Barbuda, the headquarters for Stanford's one-time global
banking and financial services empire that collapsed in 2009 after it was discovered
to be a Ponzi scheme. Stanford is in prison in Texas
and has been refused bail as a flight risk -- Stanford is also a citizen of
Antigua and Barbuda. He is scheduled to go on trial in January 2011, conveniently
two months after the congressional election in November.
Stanford's campaign contributions fell into the
coffers of congressional members of both Democrats and Republicans.However,
as WMR previously reported, Stanford International Bank also became a replacement
for the collapsed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) as a vehicle
for drug money laundering and other covert operations on behalf of the CIA and
other intelligence agencies.
See Additional Information on B.C.C.I.:
wanta_case_escalates_as_showdown_looms_on_american_soil_07252010.htm
Mary Ourisman, a
political fundraiser for Bush and other GOP candidates and a close friend of
former First Lady Laura Bush, became U.S. ambassador to Barbados and the
Eastern Caribbean States in 2006. In her job, Ourisman
ensured that Stanford's financial operations in Antigua and Barbuda, as well as
in two other Caribbean nations where she was credentialed as ambassador, St.
Kitts-Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, were protected
from federal regulators.
To provide even more protection for Stanford's
money laundering ans other covert operations,
Stanford showered GOP and Democratic senators with large campaign
contributions, including $83,000 for John Cornyn of
Texas and $950,000 for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and particularly,
Bob Menendez of New Jersey. Menendez, who maintains close connections to the
Cuban exile community in Florida and new Jersey and its CIA veteran operatives,
has refused to investigate the Stanford fraud on behalf of its victims and has
tried to block any Senate investigation of Stanford's links to the CIA and top
government officials, Democratic and Republican. It is also noteworthy that
Texas was the only U.S. state to have entered into a financial regulatory
agreement with Antigua.
The Texas Department Banking and the Antigua and
Barbuda International Financial Sector Regulatory authority signed the
agreement on July 26, 2001.
More amazingly, the agreement was signed while
Antigua was subject to a U.S. Treasury advisory warning of potential fraud.
Ourisman sat idly in Bridgetown, Barbados as Antigua's
Attorney General, Errol Cort, who had also been
Stanford's personal attorney on the island, changed the island nation's money
laundering laws to the benefit of Stanford and his CIA overseers, without a
peep from any of the regulatory agencies in Washington. Cort,
who is now the National Security Minister of Antigua and has used his position
to make things uncomfortable for Stanford fraud investigators traveling to the
island,
also served on the board of the Eastern Caribbean
Central Bank, which took over Stanford's Bank of Antigua after Stanford empire
collapsed in 2009.
Stanford had become a political kingpin in
Antigua, exercising influence over the previous Lester Bird government and its
successor, the present Baldwin Spencer government -- without any interference
from Ourisman in Barbados or the State Department. Even
today, Antigua's ambassador to the United States, Debra-Mae Lovell, the wife of
Antigua's corruption-tainted Finance Minister Harold Lovell, spends most of her
time in Washington acting as a public relations flack for Antigua and
ridiculing the former Stanford investors who were defrauded by the Ponzi scheme -- a scheme facilitated by a corrupt Antiguan
government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, more concerned about the
continuation of U.S. military basing rights on Antigua, has warmly embraced
Ambassador Lovell and members of her government and has lavished hundreds of
millions of dollars of aid on Antigua.
The bodies have piled up among those who were
most familiar with Stanford's operations. On February 25, 2009, WMR reported,
"No one will ever know just how Charlesworth
Shelley Hewlett, who ran CAS Hewlett & Company out of a small office
sandwiched between fish and chips shops on South Bury Road in Enfield in north
London, came to be the accountant for Allen Stanford's $50 billion financial
empire that included Stanford International Bank (SIB). That is because Mr.
Hewlett, known as a quiet gray-haired man to those who had offices in his north
London office block, died 'peacefully' a few weeks before the Stanford scandal
hit the front pages. Hewlett was 73 but no one knows the reason for Hewlett's death."
Hewlett also maintained an office on St. John's Street, in St. John's, the
capital of Antigua.Stogniew,
who headed a one-man company in Florida, Stogniew and Associates, provided risk analysis services
for Stanford. Stoniew produced a flimsy three-page
risk analysis report for Stanford in 2003. It mostly consisted of disclaimers.
Gerry Stogniew, who founded his company in 1980 and
resided in Seminole, Florida, died in July 2008. The firm was taken over Stogniew's daughter. Oddly, the professional staff for Stogniew and Associates are
only listed by their initials. Federal Election Commission records indicate Stogniew donated to the campaigns of George H. W. Bush in
1987 and Florida Republicans Bill McCollum in 1999 and Katherine Harris in 2005.
Allen Stanford and Mary Ourisman
shared more than an interest in protecting Stanford International Bank from
nosy regulators: they were both born in the small Texas town of Mexia, Ourisman in 1946 and
Stanford in 1950. The town's other "famous" celebrity: the late Anna
Nicole Smith, who died from a suspected lethal drug overdose in Hollywood,
Florida in 2007.
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