One is that Sir Allen, who denies wrong-doing but refused to co-operate with a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry, made oddly steady investment returns at Stanford International Bank. In 1995 and 1996, he achieved the remarkable – in fact, near-impossible – coup of identical 15.71 per cent returns.
During the same years, Fairfield Sentry, one of Mr Madoff's main “feeder funds”, declared investment returns of 12.04 and 12.08 per cent respectively, which was shockingly volatile by comparison.
A second is that SIB, like Mr Madoff's advisory business, was a strange hybrid. Mr Madoff was in effect running a hedge fund but did not charge hedge fund fees. SIB was not really a bank, for it took in deposits but did not make loans.