A judge earlier this week gave permission to a Stanford attorney, Stephen Cochell, to dismiss the lawsuit.

However, the lawyer said in a court filing that his client’s claims “will be preserved” because the criminal case remains open.

The suit filed in court in Houston, Texas alleged that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – which charged him with defrauding investors out of US$7 billion through the sale of fraudulent certificates in Stanford International Bank (SIB) in Antigua – and prosecutors acted illegally in going after him.

According to the suit, the government agents “undertook illegal tactics” to prosecute Stanford and “engaged in unfair, abusive law enforcement methods and tactics” that left him broke and unable to properly defend himself.

The trial of the alleged fraudster, which was scheduled for last month, has been postponed indefinitely by US District Judge David Hittner while Stanford gets treatment for his addiction to anti-depressants.

He’s being treated in a federal prison hospital in Butner, North Carolina.

(Parts of this article were written with content incorporated from a Caribbean360 release)