States push for more oversight after Stanford

Published 1:46 am Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Some of the nation’s secretaries of state want Congress to change regulations that kept them out of the loop during a federal probe of the Stanford Financial Group’s Ponzi scheme.

Financier R. Allen Stanford and other executives are accused of advising clients to invest more than $7 billion in bogus certificates of deposit from the Stanford International Bank in the Caribbean island of Antigua.

Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann says his office was never informed about concerns the Securities and Exchange Commission had about Stanford. If it had, he would have investigated. Hosemann wants Congress to restore a state review of private securities that are currently exempt from such oversight.

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Hosemann and other members of the National Association of Secretaries of State held a hearing Monday in Jackson.