Each business day HedgeCo.Net keeps you informed with the top hedge fund industry news, opinion and insight from around the globe. From the latest hedge fund launches, to the impact of regulation, competition, and investor activism - we track the topics and people that make a difference to you.
Caribbean Net News – The trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s business told a judge that two Cayman Islands and Bermuda hedge-fund firms accused of profiting from the fraud are ignoring his lawsuits seeking a total of $230.7 million in damages.
Trustee Irving Picard on Wednesday asked the US Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan to file default notices against the Cayman Islands-based Primeo Fund and Bermuda-based Alpha Prime Fund Ltd., court papers show. Two offshore firms sued earlier for a total of $1.2 billion also have ignored Picard’s lawsuits.
CityWire.co.uk – Bernard Madoff’s wife Ruth is being sued for $44.8 million (€31.9 million) by the trustee for the victims of his $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
Court-appointed trustee Irving Picard is the first person to take action against Madoff’s family members, all of whom have denied knowledge of the scam.
Picard’s lawsuit states: ‘Regardless of whether or not Mrs Madoff knew of the fraud her husband perpetrated…she received tens of millions of dollars…to which Mrs Madoff had no good faith basis to believe she was entitled.’
Caribbean Net News – The trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s business told a judge he is in settlement talks with three Fairfield Greenwich Group hedge funds accused of taking $3.54 billion in fake profit from the conman’s fraud.
Trustee Irving Picard said he’s in similar talks with two funds run by Bermuda-based Kingate Management Ltd., accused of withdrawing $255 million in fake profit from Madoff’s investment advisory business before his Dec. 11 arrest.
New York Times – The Ponzi scheme’s victims denounce him as cold-hearted, dishonest and just plain wrong
No, they are not describing Bernard L. Madoff, the author of the fraud that has ruined their lives. They are criticizing Irving H. Picard, the New York lawyer and trustee who has been appointed to represent their interests in the tangled scandal.
As claims flow in from thousands of victims, Mr. Picard and his legal team are quietly making life-shaping decisions every day. They decide who will be paid quickly, who will be paid eventually, who will not be paid at all and who will be asked to pay back money they got years ago.
USA Today – A Spanish banking giant that channeled $3 billion of its clients’ funds to Bernard Madoff has agreed to repay more than $235 million it withdrew from the confessed Ponzi scheme architect in the months before the scam collapsed in December.
Pending federal bankruptcy court approval, the deal announced Tuesday by a hedge fund investment subsidiary of Banco Santander would boost the amount recovered to help repay Madoff’s victims past the $1.2 billion mark.
The settlement would return 85% of the total sought from Spain’s largest bank by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee seeking Madoff’s assets for redistribution to thousands of victimized investors worldwide. Picard has so far issued more than $100 million in repayment commitments, a fraction of the total losses.
Newsinferno.com – Bernard Madoff trustee, Irving Picard, has sued three Fairfield Greenwich Group hedge funds—Fairfield Sentry Ltd., Greenwich Sentry LP, and Greenwich Sentry Partners LP—in a clawback suit that seeks the return of $3.54 billion to repay victims of Madoff’s historic Ponzi scheme, said Bloomberg News.
Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 fraud counts on March 12. The former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange ran an investment advisory business (Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, or BLMIS), for decades that was, in reality, a Ponzi scheme. Last November, Madoff told his investors that his fund held more than $64 billion, but in reality, it only held a mere fraction of that amount.
Boston Globe – The trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s defunct money-management firm sued three Fairfield Greenwich Group hedge funds, seeking the return of $3.54 billion withdrawn before Madoff’s massive fraud unraveled.
The trustee, Irving Picard, filed the so-called clawback lawsuit yesterday in federal court in Manhattan, seeking damages that would be used to repay victims of a $65 billion Ponzi scheme at Madoff’s New York-based money-management firm.
Starting in 1995, the Fairfield funds invested about $4.5 billion with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, or BLMIS, through 242 wire transfers, Picard said in the complaint. The funds are Fairfield Sentry Ltd., Greenwich Sentry LP, and Greenwich Sentry Partners LP.
Reuters UK – Five months after Bernard Madoff’s massive fraud was revealed, little of his victims’ money has been found and it appears increasingly likely that the worldwide hunt for their missing billions will drag on for years.
So far, the court-appointed trustee sorting through Wall Street’s biggest investment fraud has located only about $1 billion (656 million pounds) to be distributed to defrauded customers — a fraction of the $65 billion the confessed con man’s records purported to have in nearly 7,000 client accounts when the FBI arrested him in December.
Trustee Irving Picard has signalled, however, that he is ramping up efforts to find more money, a ray of hope for victims if these funds can ever be tracked down and shared among them.
At this relatively early stage of Picard’s investigation, though, it is unclear if that is possible.
Caribbean Net News – Cayman Islands hedge fund Harley International Ltd withdrew $425 million from swindler Bernard Madoff in the three months before his arrest, according to a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion from the fund.
The lawsuit on Tuesday by trustee Irving Picard, who is spearheading a global search to return money to thousands of defrauded customers, is one of several against funds that fed Wall Street’s biggest investment scheme over 20 years.
New York Daily News – Ezra Merkin should have known better, a lawsuit claims.
The Park Avenue hedge fund king funneled investments to Bernie Madoff and received millions in fees Merkin knew were the spoils of a massive Ponzi scheme, a lawsuit filed Thursday claims.
U.S. Bankruptcy Court trustee Irving Picard sued Merkin to recover the $557.8 million Merkin and his Gabriel Capital Corp. have withdrawn from Madoff’s firm since 1995.
Boston Globe – The trustee in the bankruptcy case of swindler Bernard L. Madoff has told a hedge fund business owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. to return money that it received from Madoff over the past six years.
Responding to a Boston Globe inquiry, bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard confirmed that he had sent a so-called clawback letter to Tremont Group Holdings Inc.
Tremont is among more than 225 former Madoff investors who have received such letters from Picard, on the grounds that the money belonged to other investors, because Madoff never generated any real investment profits. Picard wants to recoup the disbursed funds to have more money to repay investors for their losses. He has threatened to sue anyone who doesn’t return the funds.
