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Billionaire cricket promoter Sir Allen Stanford has appeared in a Virginia court charged with running a $7 billion pyramid scheme. If convicted on all counts, the high-profile financier faces 375 years in prison.
The most prominent benefactor of cricket in the West Indies, Sir Allen now faces a sentence in which he will spend a very long time doing not very much.
Prosecutors are confident that 375 is an achievable score. Sir Allen has been remanded pending a detention hearing and so remains not out.
The impact of a long prison term on this cricketing visionary will be tough. Prisoners spend most of their time sitting or standing in one place, with only limited opportunities to run around.
Once ranked the world’s 605th-richest man, Sir Allen may now lose everything he owned, including his moated Florida estate, his cricket team and Antigua, his small Commonwealth country.
This small, cricket-mad Carribean nation’s principal claim to fame was inclusion in an early draft of Beach Boys hit Kokomo in 1988, but it’s all been downhill from there.
Capital city: Ocean Suite #3, Carlisle Bay Resort
Career runs: 11,953
Origin of name: The country’s name comes from the Spanish “Ancient” and “Bearded”. Antigua wasn’t the only nation who wanted this catchy moniker: Iran was also interested.
Captain: Baldwin Spencer (UPP-St John’s Rural West)
Umpire: Her Excellency Dame Louise Agnetha Lake-Tack GCMG
Population: XI
GDP (real): $1.5 billion
GDP (imaginary): $8.5 billion
Independence: 1981 (from Britain), 2009 (from Sir Allen Stanford)
Investment grade: on par with pirate-themed $2 Instant Scratchie
