WASHINGTON (CMC) – The United States Department of Justice says that two former Allen Stanford executives have been jailed for their roles in helping the jailed Texas billionaire perpetrate a fraud scheme involving his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank (SIB).

The department said that Gilbert T Lopez Jr, who served as Stanford’s chief accounting officer, and Mark J Kuhrt, Stanford’s former global controller, were each sentenced to 20 years in prison. Both were convicted by a Houston, Texas federal jury on November 19, last year.

According to Assistant US Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, US District Judge David Hittner, who presided over the trial, also sentenced Lopez and Kuhrt to serve three years of supervised release, and ordered Lopez to pay a US$25,000 fine.

Judge Hittner also found that both defendants obstructed justice by committing perjury at trial, which spanned five weeks.

After three days of deliberations, the jury found both Lopez, 70, and Kuhrt, 40, guilty of 10 of 11 counts in the indictment.

Each defendant was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud.  They were however, found not guilty on one wire fraud count. Both defendants were taken into custody immediately following the jury’s verdict.

Breuer said Stanford, who was previously convicted in a separate trial, illegally used billions of dollars of SIB’s assets to fund his personal business ventures, to live a lavish lifestyle and for other improper purposes.

Stanford was later sentenced to 110 years in prison.

James M Davis, Stanford”s chief financial officer, who pleaded guilty and cooperated with the US government soon after SIB was shut down in February 2009 and testified at both Stanford and Lopez and Kuhrt trials, was sentenced to 60 months in prison for his role in the scheme.

Breuer said the evidence presented at Lopez and Kuhrt’s trial established that “they were aware of and tracked Stanford’s misuse of SIB’s assets, kept the misuse hidden from the public and from almost all of Stanford’s other employees and worked behind the scenes to prevent the misuse from being discovered”.

In addition, Breuer said they also helped Stanford falsely represent to SIB customers, during the economic crash in late 2008, that Stanford had infused hundreds of millions of dollars into SIB when he had not.

“As part of that effort, Lopez and Kuhrt helped design a fraudulent real estate transaction that involved falsely inflating parcels of land purchased at US$63.5 million to a purported value of US$3.2 billion,” Breuer said.