Jamaican newspaperman H.G. Helps will always remember the day Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford fired him from the Antigua Sun in 1999.
“Everybody was called to that staff meeting,” said Helps, 48, now an editor-at-large for the Jamaica Observer. “. . . He looked at me straight and said, ‘I want you to examine your heart and your mind, and determine whether you want to continue working for the company.’ ”
Stanford, who owned the newspaper, had earlier promised Helps that he wouldn’t interfere with its operations. Yet he put Helps on paid leave in front of the entire staff.
“He kept emphasizing, ‘I will pay you. I will pay you,’ ” Helps said. “And the first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Why is this man paying me to go and sit down?’ ”
Until last week, the brash and burly chief executive of Stanford Financial Group was apparently using other people’s money in a bid to become a Caribbean king.
He’d gotten as far as knighthood, an honor that the Antiguan government bestowed in 2006. But last week, a civil complaint from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Stanford of running an $8 billion investment fraud. The move not only froze his investors’ accounts but also put an abrupt end to Stanford’s royal fantasies.
Where does a jet-setting financier from Houston find the time to play mind games with the underpaid staff of a 6,000-circulation newspaper on a Caribbean island?
“As soon as he stopped addressing me, he just walked away,” Helps said in a phone interview from Kingston, Jamaica. “He didn’t say goodbye or anything. He just left everybody dumbfounded.”
During his paid leave, Helps received a hand-delivered letter saying he was fired.
His offense: covering an election rally by the opposition United Progressive Party, which was vying against the Antigua Labour Party and Stanford’s prime ally, then-Prime Minister Lester Bird.
Anyone who wants to be king has to control the media.
“He wanted to project himself as much as possible in the newspaper,” Helps said. “Photographic coverage in particular.”
When Stanford was knighted in 2006, he did something few nobles throughout history have tried: He put out a press release.
“My love for the Caribbean, its people and future . . . has been clearly displayed by my commitment to the region over the past two decades,” he pontificated.
Stanford often boasted that one of his relatives had founded Stanford University, a claim the esteemed school has gone to great lengths to debunk. The school even has a pending lawsuit against Stanford for using marketing materials with fonts and colors that are similar to the university’s logo.
“He essentially bought a knighthood,” Helps said.
“A man who receives a knighthood is somebody who is supposed to be revered by the people, and he’s not,” Helps said. “If you do a poll in Antigua, you will find that 80 percent really don’t like the man at all.”
Helps said he never dreamed Stanford would be accused of misdirecting billions of dollars’ worth of his investors’ funds.
Now, it all makes sense to Helps as Stanford takes his place beside alleged Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff in the headlines.
“That’s the bottom line, really,” Helps said. “That was what he was gaming for — people to trust him . . . so that they could invest as much as possible with him.”
Al Lewis: 201-938-5266 or al.lewis@dowjones.com
