Antigua Online Casino Regulators Under Stanford Shadow

The chief regulator for financial systems and online casinos in Antigua was suspended pending further charges after being implicated in the Allen Stanford banking scam.

The head of the Antigua and Barbuda Financial Services Regulatory Commission, Leroy King, has been suspended due to links to financier Allen Stanford and his collapsed pyramid scheme. King's agency is the same one responsible for monitoring and regulating online casinos based in the island nation.

King has been accused by US investigators of accepting bribes in the thousands of dollars to ignore irregularities in Stanford's banking operations, which were largely based on Antigua. Audits that King supposedly ran against Stanford's bank were merely for appearance's sake, say US banking authorities.

Online gambling operators are concerned that the ongoing banking scandal has affected the hard-won reputation of the Internet casino industry in Antigua. The regulatory system had just received the highly-sought White Listing by UK regulators, granting a seal of approval to Antigua, when news of the Stanford scam broke.

Attorney General Justin Simon of Antigua said the Cabinet would meet next week to decide what further actions to take against King.

"Antigua and Barbuda's offshore business activities (are) once again placed under intense international scrutiny, and this will clearly have adverse effects on the economy and raise questions about our regulatory legal framework," Simon said.

The attorney general went on to reassure the international community that the scandal has caused an intensive internal investigation, both into King's activities and the failures in the system itself.