Over the last ten years, R. Allen Stanford -- the Texas billionaire charged by the SEC today with "massive fraud" -- and his companies have spent at least $5 million on lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions to a bipartisan group of congressional leaders.
The heavy political spending comes despite Stanford's history of run-ins with federal regulators dating back at least to 1999, when he caught the attention of the State Department for his role in tightening the already-secretive banking laws of...
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