It Will All End In Tears: 1. Allen Stanford

Antigua is having a bad trot. Having suffered the humiliation of having a Test match at their wizbang new-ish Sir Vivian Richards Stadium being abandoned because of a dangerous playing surface, they now find that the Man Who Held The Antiguan Economy By The Short And Curlies is in deep trouble with the US legal system.

Sir R.Allen Stanford has been accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of performing, through his Stanford Financial Group, a fraud in high-yield securities to the tune of $8 billion. (That's equivalent to the winner-take-all prizemoney in 400 Stanford 20/20's.)

Reports from the New York Times and Houston Chronicle, while Cricinfo provides an interesting timeline of the Sir RAS story.

Here is a report on the Stanford fiasco from CNBC on Friday (and I think this permalink might work better than the last one used on this article):

(Future items in this series:
It Will All End In Tears 2. The Indian Cricket League;
It Will All End In Tears 3. The Indian Premier League;
It Will All End In Tears 4. The ICC in Dubai.)