'Snowballing' in the sun-drenched Caribbean

I’ve just called up an old friend in Antigua to ask him how the Allen Stanford debacle‘s affecting life on his idyllic isle. There are pictures of panic spreading, with long queues outside banks.

His name’s John Fuller and he’s a criminal attorney. Here’s his Caribbean update: “Stanford has had many critics over the years. He is brash. He is arrogant.

“He has not endeared himself to the better-educated class and they are gloating and there are many ‘I told you so’s’ going on. It’s like an atomic bomb going off in the middle of this small island.”

“I’ve been inundated,” he says, “as have many other lawyers here, by calls from foreign depositors arriving in droves here. There have been a large number of small aircraft arriving at the airport.

“They’re trying to figure out how to get their money out – which they can’t because the assets have been frozen in the US. It’s going to be a long haul – and there are going to be a lot of unhappy people.”

“Many locals, who are non-resident Antiguans, have deposits in the offshore accounts of Stanford International Bank and there is panic that their life savings have been lost.”

“Snowballing” would be the climatically inappropriate term to use for what’s happening in the sun-drenched Caribbean.

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