Press releases

“Allen Stanford’s victims have suffered too long, and it’s past time Societe Generale return their money. I hope to see this $110 million back in the hands of the victims by year’s end.”

MADISONVILLE, La. – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, today announced that $110 million will be returned to victims of Robert Allen Stanford, who coordinated the second-largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.

“Allen Stanford’s victims have suffered too long, and it’s past time Societe Generale return their money. I hope to see this $110 million back in the hands of the victims by year’s end. Even then, however, there’s more work to be done to make right Stanford’s theft. I will continue working with Chairman Clayton and Attorney General Barr to prioritize the return of these stolen assets,” said Kennedy.

In June 2019, Swiss courts ordered Societe Generale (SocGen) to return $110 million in frozen assets from the Stanford Ponzi scheme. SocGen decided not to appeal the ruling. The Department of Justice must now work with Swiss authorities to liquidate these funds and return them to the victims.

More than 1,000 Louisianians from Baton Rouge, Covington and Lafayette lost significant amounts of their life savings to Stanford’s fraud.

Background:

In August, Kennedy sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows urging the administration to withdraw its nomination of Michael Finkel to be a Director of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Finkel is currently Director and Senior Counsel at SocGen, which controls $210 million that belongs to victims of Stanford’s $8 billion Ponzi scheme.

Kennedy in February sent a letter to SocGen regarding its participation in the Stanford Ponzi scheme. The letter criticized SocGen’s failure to properly monitor Stanford-affiliated bank accounts, which were used to manage the personal assets of the Stanford group’s clientele.