Bloomberg – Stanford Group Co.’s court-appointed receiver and securities regulators asked a U.S. judge to deny requests by hundreds of investors to join the regulatory lawsuit at the heart of an $8 billion fraud investigation.

The receiver, Ralph Janvey, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday filed papers in federal court in Dallas opposing the requests by more than 45 groups of investors and creditors who have asked permission to join the SEC’s suit against R. Allen Stanford.

“Allowing all the investors to intervene in the enforcement action would destroy any hope for an efficient distribution of assets,” Janvey said in a court filing late yesterday. He said he’s working “as quickly as possible to release more accounts through a certification process” designed to free all frozen funds not directly linked to the suspected fraud.

Most of the groups asking to join the SEC’s fraud case are investors whose brokerage accounts were frozen along with Stanford’s personal and corporate assets when regulators sued the Texas financier, two associates and three affiliated companies on Feb. 17. Stanford is suspected of orchestrating the fraud through the sale of high-yield certificates of deposit by Antigua-based Stanford International Bank.

Last week, Janvey won court approval to release $4.6 billion from about 28,000 frozen brokerage accounts. U.S. District Judge David Godbey extended the freeze on more than $1 billion in about 4,000 remaining Stanford accounts, most of which belong to Stanford employees or executives or are linked to investments issued by the Antiguan bank.

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