KEY POINTS:
The arrest on fraud charges of 'Sir' Allen Stanford should send a message to all sports players and administrators that appropriate due diligence of a company and its frontman should be carried out before entering any sort of sponsorship arrangement.
Stanford has the feel of an old-fashioned shyster. He used to put it about that he was descended from Leland Stanford, founder of the famous university in California. That was until the university publicly declared there was no evidence of such lineage.
His so-called knighthood is a sham. Apart from him being a Texan, the title was bestowed in Antigua with no approval from the Queen. Lester Bird, former Antigua Prime Minister and another highly dodgy character, gave him the gong because of favours Stanford provided.
Cricket is not the only sport now embarrassed about doing business with him. He's sponsored golf, tennis, polo and sailing, as well as having personal arrangements with golfers Vijay Singh and Camillo Villegas, and English footballer Michael Owen. What the future holds for the Stanford St Jude Memphis Classic on the PGA Tour and the Stanford Financial Tour Championship on the LPGA Tour is unconfirmed.
Everybody is entitled to justice and Stanford still has to go through the system - he has been found, hasn't he? But reputation is everything and Stanford's has hit rock bottom. Those golf tournaments will have to find new title sponsors.
This situation reminds me of the disastrous New Zealand Open of 2006. The tournament was desperate to find a title sponsor and Blue Chip Investments was signed up only months out from the event. Frontman Mark Bryers swaggered around Gulf Harbour like he owned the place. The irony was that he announced he had actually bought the course, not with company money but with his own personal fortune. There
were all sorts of grandiose plans. A flash hotel, course changes, Michael Campbell carrying the name of the place on his bag (what was he thinking?) and a golf academy. Those of us who couldn't understand quite how Blue Chip made its money - does anybody now? - were highly sceptical. It was just all hot air. Gulf Harbour went into receivership and is only now working its way out.
The worst aspect of the sponsorship was the access Blue Chip and its representatives had to golf club members around the country to sell their dodgy property schemes. At the New Zealand Seniors Championship in Te Puke in early 2007, Blue Chip had a marquee by the 18th green and representatives were hitting on competitors before they'd even signed their cards. I waved them away but still received follow-up
phone calls when I got home, presumably from a database New Zealand Golf supplied as part of the sponsorship. I hope none of my fellow competitors were naïve enough to have signed up.
By the time that New Zealand Open was played, some new board members were well aware as to what type of flimsy company they were dealing with and moved very quickly to end the arrangement. All the contracted sponsorship money was paid, eventually, but there sighs of deep relief when the real truth about Blue Chip emerged soon after.
We won't know who the big losers are in the Stanford meltdown for sometime yet. I just hope those West Indies cricketers who each won a million dollars in that Twenty20 match last year took real money, and didn't reinvest it with Mr Stanford.
* Reports suggest at least two West Indian players, Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan, did re-invest with Stanford.
