Austria's Bank Medici hit with $19.6bn Bernard Madoff lawsuit
Telegraph
11 Dicembre 2010
La signora Kohn (Coen) della nota compagnia di criminali
Irving H Picard, the court-appointed trustee seeking to recover money for Mr Madoff's investors, alleges that Sonja Kohn, the former president of Bank Medici, masterminded the funnelling of billions of dollars to the New York-based investment company.
Ms Kohn is alleged to have begun the deception soon after she met Mr Madoff in 1985.
"More than $9bn of the Ponzi scheme's stolen capital is directly attributable to Kohn and the Medici enterprise," claimed Timothy Pfeifer, of Baker & Hostetler, the law firm representing Mr Picard. In return, Ms Kohn and her family allegedly received more than $62m from Mr Madoff.
The lawsuit is the latest in a flurry from Mr Picard, who is trying to retrieve more than $15bn from those he claims helped perpetuate the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.
UBS has been sued for at least $2bn, JPMorgan Chase for $6.4bn and HSBC for $9bn. All three banks deny the allegations. Ms Kohn could not be reached for comment but a lawyer for Bank Medici has reportedly called the allegations “completely wrong”.
Mr Madoff was sentenced in March 2009 to 150 years in jail for the scheme, which relied on him attracting new investors to pay the returns promised to existing ones. The fraud was unearthed when the financial crisis prompted a swathe of investors to ask for their money back.
The suit against Ms Kohn alleges that Mr Madoff kept the relationship secret from employees at his firm and that he appears to have tried to destroy records of payments made before his arrest in December 2008.
In 2008, Bank Medici won awards for the performance of its funds.
By Richard Blackden, in New York
Source > Telegraph