ST. CROIX (Bloomberg) — Allen Stanford told US Virgin Islands authorities two years he had "a very large war chest of cash", a claim that may anger investors who lost access to their money after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the billionaire with massive fraud.

Stanford also told members of the Virgin Islands Economic Development Commission that his 62 companies, in which he was the sole shareholder, managed more than $30 billion and that he was ready to invest about $2 billion in the island of St. Croix and elsewhere in the Caribbean in exchange for the right to reduce his personal US tax bill by 90 percent.

"I am a very large target to pay taxes and this is a driving force" for his proposal to relocate his headquarters from Houston to St. Croix, Stanford told the commission at a public hearing on November 30, 2006, according to a transcript. Nine months earlier, he began fighting the US Internal Revenue Service over an unpaid tax bill that reached more than $104.2 million in August 2008.

The testimony may create a new avenue court-appointed receiver Ralph Janvey can explore in his hunt for Stanford Financial Group assets that can be released to Stanford's alleged victims.

Janvey said yesterday some mutual-fund assets should be released from a court-ordered freeze, although he previously said customers generally can't withdraw cash or close accounts. Experts said Janvey may need a decade to finish repaying victims.

The SEC sued Stanford and two aides on February 17, accusing them of misleading investors about $8 billion in certificates of deposit in Antigua-based Stanford International Bank. The FBI is investigating the fraud allegation, a person familiar with the case said this week.

Stanford, 58, approached the US Virgin Islands in 2006 in a bid to take advantage of a congressionally sanctioned economic development program there that allows people who qualify to legally reduce their personal tax bill to 3.5 percent from as high as 35 percent.

At his 2006 hearing, Stanford portrayed himself as a lady- and cricket-loving West Indian native who had grown frustrated with the way employees of his Houston headquarters were running his business. He said he was committed to developing St. Croix, which he called "a diamond that is waiting to be discovered" after 24 years of basing his Caribbean operations in Antigua.

"I'm going to de-ivory towerize," he told the commission, saying his Houston office had "grown into something that I'm not really that happy with right now." He said employees "are making decisions all over the world where I do business and we have businesses and they are sometimes too far removed from where we are doing business".

"I'm, I guess, as committed to being a West Indian as you can because I am a West Indian," he said. "And I have proven over the years that I will put my money where my mouth is."