The billionaire has allegedly been selling false promises to investors, according to a US financial watchdog.
Sir Allen Stanford, billionaire US financier, is facing charges from US regulators for alleged fraud.
The Securities and Exchange Committee (SEC) said that the St John's, Antigua-based Stanford International Bank (SIB) is suspected of selling $8 billion of potentially fraudulent high-returning investment products. The rates offered by the bank were described as "improbable and unsubstantiated".
SIB itself perpetrated a "massive fraud based on false promises and fabricated historical return data to prey on investors," the regulator added.
The bank was also linked by the SEC to the allegedly fraudulent funds run by Bernard Madoff, the hedge fund manager currently awaiting trial in the US. The bank is said to have wrongly claimed to have had no exposure to Mr Madoff's investments.
"Recently, as the market absorbed the news of Bernard Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme, SIB has attempted to calm its own investors by claiming the bank has no "direct or indirect" exposure to Madoff's scheme," the SEC said. "These assurances are false."
Assets at the bank have now been frozen and two other employees of SIB are also facing charges relating to the alleged fraud.
Stanford is most famous - and notorious - in the UK for his sponsorship of cricket. Most notably, the England team recently played in - and lost - a lucrative, Stanford-bankrolled tournament in the West Indies.
