SEC Lightly Slaps Attorney in Allen Stanford Swingle

SEC Bars Dallas Attorney From Practicing in Front of Commission, Citing His Failure to Stop Allen Stanford's Swindle
The Dallas Morning News by Robert Wilonsky  -  May 25, 2012

Spencer Barasch — or, at least, his attorney — has always maintained he did nothing wrong by doing nothing at all to stop R. Allen Stanford from building his financial empire on a Ponzi scheme. Time and again there were allegations: The 54-year-old Barasch, once the head of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth office, repeatedly looked the other way as the evidence mounted that Stanford was on well on his way to swindling investors out of $7 billion.  In April 2010, the SEC kicked out a 151-page report that said “over a seven-year period Barasch rebuffed repeated pleas from agency staff to investigate Stanford’s offshore bank and his oversized investment claims,” as Eric Torbenson and Dave Michaels wrote at the time. The report said Barasch could have put a stop to Stanford’s misdeeds as early as 1998. There was even talk of the feds prosecuting Barasch for his refusal to take action, and for his role in representing Stanford following his departure from the SEC in ’05.  In 2011, investors sued the SEC and Barasch; a year later, Barasch agreed to cough up $50,000 to make the SEC’s conflict-of-interest allegations go away. At which point his attorney, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Paul Coggins, told The News that “for over 17 years, Spencer Barasch served the SEC and his country with integrity and distinction, and he has carried the same high standards of ethics and achievement into private practice.”  But the SEC still isn’t buying it: Barasch, now the head of downtown Dallas-based Andrews Kurth’s corporate governance and securities enforcement team, was barred yesterday from appearing and practicing before the SEC for one year. Said the commission in its release:  The bar was imposed in an order instituting an administrative proceeding and resolves allegations involving Barasch’s representation of Stanford Group Company after Barasch went into private practice. Barasch consented to the Commission’s action without admitting or denying the Commission’s allegations.  In the order that follows, the SEC explains why it imposed the sanctions against Barasch. Says SEC Associate General Counsel Richard Humes, “This action shows that the Commission takes seriously ethical lapses by attorneys who appear and practice before it, and that such violations will result in serious disciplinary action.” Meanwhile, his bio touts his considerable experience successfully representing clients being investigated by the SEC.  rwilonsky@dallasnews.com