Antigua - A New Spotlight

In 2002 Peter Fritsch, a renowned Wall Street Journal reporter, first highlighted the curiosities in Texan Allen Stanford's growing financial empire centered in Antigua and also exposed the expropriation of US-owned private property, known as the Half Moon Bay Resort, by the Government of Antigua and Barbuda.

Now the former reporter and Bureau Chief is a partner and project leader at Fusion GPS, a Washington D.C. private research and strategy consulting firm.

Fritsch is a multilingual investigator, writer and manager with 24 years of experience on four continents, who has led and participated in Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigations from Mexico, Brazil, Southeast Asia, Brussels and Washington, D.C. and has powerful relationships with international law and policy makers.

Today, Fritsch and his partners are again looking at Antigua. This time, his inquiry aims to go deeper than a journalistic interest would indicate. His firm, staffed by former intelligence officials and media professionals, recently agreed to work with the Half Moon Bay shareholders to assist them in their pursuit of justice.

IMS: Peter, it has been nearly a decade since you wrote about the expropriation of Half Moon Bay on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Much has changed in Antigua since that time. Allen Stanford is in jail and you are no longer a journalist. Tell me what you're up to now and what brings you back to the topic of Antigua?

PF: Yes, it's been a while. I am now a partner in a private research company in Washington D.C. I work with a former colleague at the WSJ, an expert in dealing with issues of money laundering and transnational crime. Our third partner is a former intelligence official from the Treasury Department. He is an expert in mapping of illicit financial networks. We basically carry out private investigations for clients and then seek to make our findings part of the public discussion, when appropriate. Think of us as collectors of strategic information that can help raise awareness of an issue.

IMS: And what is your connection to Antigua?

PF: I recently returned to the subject of Antigua through Natalia Querard. I happened to run into her earlier this year in Washington, where she was meeting with some government officials and Members of congress regarding her case. It had been a long time since we collaborated on that WSJ story you mentioned and I was astounded to hear that her saga continues. I had just assumed the collapse of the...