HOUSTON – A United States federal district judge has rejected a bid by lawyers for disgraced Texas financier Allen Stanford to quit the case.
Judge David Hittner ruled that the attorneys must defend Stanford in a US$7 billion investment fraud trial involving Stanford’s Antigua-based Stanford International Bank (SIB). The trial begins on January 23 in Houston federal court.
Sanford’s court-appointed attorneys, Ali Fazel, Robert Scardino, John Parras and Ken McGuire, asked to quit his case in a motion filed on Wednesday, less than two weeks before the start of jury selection.
They claimed they hadn’t been given enough time or resources to prepare an adequate defence against what they describe as a complicated financial fraud case.
“The defence team’s primary reason for seeking such relief is based upon its self-proclamation that Stanford’s right to effective assistance of counsel will be impaired,” Judge Hittner said in a two-page order that also rejected the lawyer’s bid for a three-month delay in starting the trial.
“The court notes that the defence team maintains this position, despite the fact that two of its lawyers – Scardiono and Fazel – have been appointed to this case since November 2010, and the other two lawyers – Parras and McGuire – have been appointed to this case since March 2011,” Hittner said.
Stanford, 61, has been imprisoned as a flight risk since he was indicted in June 2009 on charges of defrauding investors through allegedly bogus certificates of deposit at the SIB.
Stanford denies all wrongdoing. (CMC)
