WASHINGTON — A former Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement official who has been accused of repeatedly blocking efforts to investigate R. Allen Stanford, the Houston financier charged with running an $7 billion Ponzi scheme, is the subject of a federal criminal probe for having done legal work for Stanford after leaving the SEC, government officials said yesterday.
The former official, Spencer C. Barasch, is now a private attorney in Texas.
He has represented clients before the agency, including a defendant charged last month with financial fraud by the SEC in federal court in Dallas.
Those disclosures came yesterday at a congressional hearing into the SEC’s failures to stop the Stanford Ponzi scheme.
Barasch’s law firm said he had not acted unethically or violated any laws.
