Former Swiss president quits Stanford board: report

ZURICH (Reuters) - Former Swiss President Adolf Ogi was quoted as saying he is stepping down from the advisory board of Stanford Financial Group after Texas billionaire Allen Stanford and three of his companies were charged with fraud.

"I don't want to have anything to do with something that could be dodgy," Ogi told the Swiss daily Cash, according to its website on Wednesday. He added that he was stepping down immediately from the board.

"We never discussed the operational business in the meetings," Ogi, who met Stanford while working as a U.N. adviser on sport, said of his participation on the advisory board.

Ogi was not immediately available for comment on the report.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accuses Stanford, a high-profile cricket promoter, and two executives of fraudulently selling $8 billion in high-yield certificates of deposit in a scheme stretching from Texas to the Caribbean.

Stanford had also set up a European operation in Zurich. Employees at the Zurich office declined to comment on the investigation on Wednesday, referring queries to the United States.

When Ogi was appointed to the Stanford advisory board in April last year, he said in a statement: "I am proud to be involved with a financial services group that also understands the importance of improving communities through philanthropy."

Ogi, a member of the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) and former director of the Swiss Ski Federation, was Swiss president in 1993 and 2000. He was appointed special U.N. Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace in 2001.

Stanford, a 58-year-old Texan running the firm that his grandfather founded, has denied any wrongdoing, but his location remained a mystery.

Stanford's property holdings and celebrity associations drew comparisons with Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff, who was charged in December in a suspected $50 billion fraud.

(Reporting by Martin de Sa'Pinto and Emma Thomasson; Editing by Sharon Lindores)