The local arm of the Stanford
Financial Group has halted its activities on Colombia’s stock
exchange with the permission of authorities, the Colombian
Financial Superintendency said in a statement on Wednesday.
U.S. authorities have charged the group and its founder
with perpetrating a “massive” fraud.
Alvaro Camaro, the bank’s local director, told Reuters the
company had sufficient solvency to provide guarantees to its
local investors.
“With what has happened to the group at a global level, we
had to take a decision to protect investors and naturally to
guarantee stability in the market,” Camaro said.
In a complaint filed in federal court in Dallas, the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission accused billionaire Allen
Stanford of fraudulently selling $8 billion in high-yield
certificates of deposit in a scheme that stretched from Texas
to the Caribbean. (Reuters)