‘Fraudster Donated to Chabad’

By COLlive reporter

As FBI agents tracked down billionaire R. Allen Stanford at the Virginia home of an acquaintance Thursday and served him with legal papers, a new report claims to tie him to the Chabad-Lubavitch network of emissaries.

Stanford is involved in a civil case accusing him of orchestrating an $8-billion investment scam. There have been no criminal charges filed against Stanford so he remains free, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint Tuesday alleging that Stanford and two other top executives of his investment empire misled depositors in a “massive fraud.”

A federal judge in Texas issued search warrants and shut down the Houston headquarters of Stanford’s global financial empire, Los Angeles Times reported.

The FBI is also reportedly pursuing a criminal investigation of Stanford’s businesses.

The SEC announced its action against Stanford on Tuesday, alleging that the flamboyant Texan billionaire and his two colleagues perpetrated “a fraud of shocking magnitude that has spread its tentacles throughout the world.”

Israel’s Channel 2 TV reported on Thursday that Stanford invested in two Israeli capital funds and donated large sums to “educational institutions in Israel, the Jewish Agency the Joint and Chabad Houses in the World.”

A high ranking official of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, educational and social services arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, said he knows nothing about it.

“Frankly, I never heard of Stanford before this,” he told COLlive.

While Israeli TV featured footage of the Chabad House in Bangkok, Thailand, when claiming the connection, their website and building does not mention Stanford as a donor or a supporter.