Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Florida Blogs -> South Florida Lawyers

Florida

: South Florida Lawyers

Bowman Brown and the Lawyer "Across the Street"

Remember when Bowman Brown repeatedly shared his "brush with Stanford" anecdote? We covered it here, here, here, here, and here.

This is what we wrote back in March 2009:

But it is such a great story. To borrow from Gore Vidal for a moment, the art of a good lawyer war story is to craft something that manages to burnish your own skills and competence at some other lawyer or judge's expense.

By that measure Bowman has hit it out of the park.

Still, there was always this lingering unanswered question:

"What he wanted to do was just not workable in my view, it was not anything I wanted to be near," Brown said. "I told him that I couldn't help him, so he went across the street and found somebody who could and set up in Miami."

So -- just who is Bowman talking about??

Back then it was suggested to possibly be former GT/now Hunton lawyer Carlos Loumiet.

Well in today's Herald comes this remarkable story, which helps give Bowman's anecdote some context:

Years before his banking empire was shut down in a massive fraud case, Allen Stanford swept into Florida with a bold plan: entice Latin Americans to pour millions into his ventures -- in secrecy.

From a bayfront office in Miami in 1998, he planned to sell investments to customers and send their money to Antigua.

But to pull it off, he needed unprecedented help from an unlikely ally: The state of Florida would have to grant him the right to move vast amounts of money offshore -- without reporting a penny to regulators.

He got it.

Over objections by the state's chief banking lawyer -- including concerns that Stanford was laundering money -- regulators granted sweeping powers never given to a private company.

The new company was also allowed to sell hundreds of millions in bank notes without allowing regulators to check for fraud.

So who, according to the article, helped Stanford out:

Carlos Loumiet, a former Greenberg Traurig lawyer who helped draft the deal, declined to comment, citing ethical concerns.

Maybe someone should ask Bowman who he was talking about?

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on July 05, 2009 (boomark / email).