Antigua & Barbuda

Antigua & Barbuda is a small two-island nation, formerly British, that lies among the Leeward Islands. Like most of those islands, the early years of the islands' settlement was a story of sugar, slavery and rebellion. The smaller Barbuda (Spanish for "bearded") was primarily used as both a source of foodstuffs and a nursery of slaves for other Caribbean islands.

During the post-World War Two era, Vere Bird, member of the Antigua Trades and Labour Union, was elected to the local parliament. This started a career in politics that was to last until 1994. Starting off as rather a radical figure, Bird by the late 1960s had drifted rightward as he sought to maintain a position of influence as the territory moved toward independence, which came in 1981. Post-independence, Antigua struggled to find sources of income. Tourism was, and is, a mainstay, but is subject to fluctuations in the American economy and the government is often accused of not promoting the country enough internationally. Also, sugar exports don't bring in much money anymore. And so, Bird and his Antigua Labour Party came to allow the use of the country as an off-shore banking site. This continued after Bird's son, Lester Bryant Bird, assumed the prime minister-ship of the country. As a result, money-laundering became a problem, to the extant that the U.K. in 1999 issued an advisory to its financial institutions about the Antiguan banking situation.

But if you really want to see how Antigua's lax banking laws came to screw up the country, please examine the case of Allen Stanford. Born in Texas, his first off-shore banking adventure, on Montserrat resulted in his relinquishing his banking license in the British territory. Not wanting to go back to America's high tax rates, he therefore moved on to Antigua. Throwing his money around liberally (his net worth of over 2 billion dollars dwarfed the Antiguan economy), soon Stanford was rumored to even be sitting in on cabinet meetings. Eventually, Stanford became the country's largest employer. Buying huge amounts of land, he built a hospital, a cricket stadium, banks (off-shore and regular), owned a newspaper, and even had his own private security- and custom-free terminal at the local airport so that his guests could rapidly enter the country and dine at his gourmet restaurant The Sticky Wicket. Knighted by the government of Antigua & Barbuda in 2006, Sir Allen Stanford had it all. Unfortunately, Stanford was running a Ponzi scheme, with a side business (possibly) of laundering money for Mexico's Gulf Cartel. And in 2009, it all came crashing down with his arrest in America (he is due to stand trial in January 2011). Because of Antigua's dependence upon this one man criminal to prop up its fragile economy, his downfall is putting the hurts on 70,000 people.