An interview ABC News scored with Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, whose global empire of companies has crumbled in the face of a Securities and Exchange investigation, promises to be much different than the now-infamous CNBC interview where he gloated about the "fun" involved in being a billionaire.
"A tearful Allen Stanford expects indictment in two weeks," is how ABC describes the interview, which runs tonight at 5:30 p.m. CDT. The network also says Stanford at one point threatens to punch anchor Charlie Gibson "in the month" for bringing up allegations that some of Stanford's fortune might have been tied to drug money.
According to ABC:
"If you say it to my face again, I will punch you in the mouth," he said.
Then backing off, Stanford said, "No, I'm not going to punch you in the mouth. But I'm just saying that's an absolutely, absolutely ludicrous thing to say. Anybody who knows me knows that's the case."
"Any bank, any organization, financial organization the size we are, you cannot be sure, a hundred per cent sure, that every customer you have is clean," Stanford said.
Allen Stanford also strongly denies the SEC civil charges that he and former Baylor University roommate James Davis, the Memphis-based chief financial officer, had engineered a Ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi scheme, people are scammed when a person or company pays off early investors with money lured from new investors, rather than from proceeds generated through legitimate investments.
The SEC believes that the Ponzi scheme, possibly reaching as much as $8 billion, was created around bogus certificates of deposit held by a bank in Antigua.
According to ABC, Stanford says, "I would die and go to hell if it's a Ponzi scheme."
"Baloney. Baloney," Stanford told ABC News. "It's not a Ponzi scheme. If it was a Ponzi scheme, why are they finding billions and billions of dollars all over the place?"
The court-appointed receiver in charge of searching for assets has said that it appears they will only be able to recover a "fraction of the amount needed to satisfy the anticipated claims against the estate."
Stanford Financial Group operated an office in East Memphis out of the Crescent Center, where James Davis and chief investment officer Laura Pendergest-Holt were based. Both live in Baldwyn, Miss.
Pendergest-Holt is facing civil charges from the SEC of helping Stanford and Davis facilitate a Ponzi scheme anchored in the fraudulent CDs; she also was arrested by the FBI for obstruction of justice, and is awaiting indictment.
No other criminal charges have been filed.
Allen Stanford claims in the interview that the government sees him as a trophy -- "the moose head on the wall" -- and becomes emotional when rejecting comparisons to Bernard Madoff, who has pleaded guilty to operating a Ponzi scheme that ran into the tens of billions of dollars.
ABC News says Stanford replied, "It makes me madder than hell and it touches the core of my soul."
Stanford also discusses having to fly commercial for the first time in nearly two decades, because his assets are frozen and his six jets have been taken away
"They make you take your shoes off and everything, it's terrible," he complained about the airport security that apparently came as a surprise to him.
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