Stanford bank is saved by buyer

PANAMA. The administrator designated by the US Security Commission to safeguard the interests of the Stanford Group, Ralph Janvey has announced that a buyer has been found.

Janvey said that on April 16 he received proposals from three consortiums wanting to buy Stanford Bank. One was Venezuelan, the other Colombian and the third Panamanian-American.

Before completing the preliminary prerequisites imposed by the US Security Commission and the Panama Bank Superintendent, one bidder retired.

Janvey did not disclose the name of the ultimate buyer, because a confidentiality agreement is in place, but everything will be revealed in due course.

The purchase will not take place until the contract is approved by a court in Dallas, Texas, and is ratified by the Panama Bank Superintendent.

The process can take several weeks to be approved and Janvey decided not to venture an approximate date.

Stanford Bank operations in Panama were suspended in February when the major shareholder the Texan Robert Allen Stanford was accused of defrauding hundreds of investors in Texas.

The Bank Superintendent decided to take Stanford into administration after its board of directors asked for its intervention when account holders started to take their money out.

Since then all the accounts in the bank have been frozen, creating problems for some clients, who were unable to have access to their funds and companies had to seek funds elsewhere to avoid bankruptcy. Some of them were in such bad shape that they did not have enough money to pay the payroll.

According to one administrator of Stanford Bank in Great Britain, once the sale of financial institution is completed, the process of giving the account holders access to their money will commence, after permission has been sought from US authorities.

Currently, representatives of Stanford Bank Switzerland are seeking permission from the United States to unfreeze the accounts.

Stanford Bank Panama has a capital of $228.6 million. The bank has been operating with a skeleton staff over the last four months collecting money owed to the bank and avoiding the depletion of the principal capital.