Both parties scheme for Ponzi cash

In court documents, attorneys for the major-party committees put forth several arguments for why they should be allowed to keep the contributions, including arguing that the lawsuits seeking the return of the money weren’t filed on time.

U.S. District Judge David Godbey disagreed, noting in a 61-page ruling that the committees “fail to create a fact issue concerning the Ponzi scheme’s existence or the contributions’ source and make no attempt to show that the contributions were made in exchange for consideration of reasonably equivalent value.”

The judge ordered the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to return $1,037,347; the NRCC, $260,291; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, $218,273; the National Republican Senatorial Committee, $90,960; and the Republican National Committee, $140,241.

Kevin Sadler, attorney for Mr. Janvey, said in an email that the ruling represented an important victory for the receivership and thousands of victims of the Ponzi scheme.

“As important as this decision is, there remain hundreds of other defendants, individuals, companies and organizations, which, like these political committees, received hundreds of millions of dollars of investor funds diverted by Allen Stanford and his fraud scheme,” Mr. Sadler said.

“Such funds rightfully belong only to the receiver, whose duty it is to recover these funds and use them to compensate the victims of the Stanford fraud.”

Mr. Stanford’s trial recently was postponed from September to January. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of bilking investors of about $7 billion.

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