Pietersen lost cash to ‘sleazebag’ Stanford

Former England cricket captain Kevin Pietersen admitted in an interview published Sunday that he too had lost money in torn-up contracts with alleged fraudster Allen Stanford.

Pietersen, who did not specify the value of the contracts he had signed with Stanford to be a cricket ambassador, described the Texas financier as a ‘sleazebag’ and said his sponsorship of a tournament involving England made it seem as though “the England team had been sold.”

His comments to the News of the World weekly newspaper came after authorities seized the Bank of Antigua, one of Stanford’s assets, while Peru, Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia have also taken action against his banks. “I was an ambassador for Stanford - a player face - but that contract has gone,” he told the paper. The News of the World reported that Pietersen had signed a two-year deal with Stanford, with an option to promote Stanford’s winner-takes-all Twenty20 clash for a further three years.

“Stanford was a sleazebag,” Pietersen said. “I was very uncomfortable with the whole Stanford thing.”

“It was not that I was captain at the time, it was the uncomfortable situation of everybody thinking the England team had been sold. With the financial state of the world, people were talking about money instead of cricket.

LONDON, Sunday, AFP