Jewish Austrian banker suspected of being Madoff's 'criminal soul mate'

[Poll_Blind]

Picked this up from Haaretz (Israel's oldest newspaper) doing my regular troll of Middle East news, Jewish Austrian banker suspected of being Madoff's 'criminal soul mate':

Jewish Austrian banker Sonja Kohn, accused in a United Staes lawsuit of being Bernard Madoff's "criminal soul mate", was instead a victim of the man behind the biggest fraud in financial history, her lawyer in Vienna said.

The U.S. trustee seeking money for people cheated in Madoff's decades-long multibillion dollar fraud sued Kohn and the bank she founded, Bank Medici, as well as Italy's UniCredit CRID.MI and its unit, Bank Austria, and 53 other defendants on Friday.

--snip--

Kohn moved to New York in 1985 where she first met and connected with Madoff after she and her husband founded a brokerage firm, the Eurovaleur Inc, and she became the first women to head a brokerage firm.

The complaint filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York claimed that $9.1 billion of stolen money was directly attributable to Kohn, her relatives and a labyrinth of feeder funds and banks in Austria, Italy and Gibraltar.

It said Kohn presented herself to potential investors as Madoff's close friend.

As an FYI, the Madoff Ponzi scheme swindled about 65 billion dollars from various institutions including many charitable organizations. This becomes really interesting to me because a trustee liquidating of Madoff's investment firm (Irving Picard) is going Apache Wildcat™ on the web of banks and individuals surrounding and sometimes supporting Madoff's firm..

An entirely different but related article, from yesterday's Business Week goes into more detail:

Irving Picard filed hundreds of lawsuits against banks, feeder funds, investors and others alleged to have profited from Madoff’s decades-long crime. Among those sued was Madoff’s son Mark, who hung himself in his Manhattan apartment Dec. 11, the two-year anniversary of his father’s arrest.

The deadline for Picard to file claims expired that day. So far, he has recovered about $2.5 billion. Last week, he sued Bank Medici AG and its founder, Sonja Kohn, as well as Bank Austria, UniCredit SpA and dozens of other parties. He is seeking $19.6 billion from them, which could potentially triple to $58.8 billion under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It’s the biggest claim filed by Picard.

--snip--

In the 153-page complaint against Kohn, Picard claimed she told investors she was very close to Madoff and could deliver higher returns on investments made through his firm. Instead, Madoff was secretly paying Kohn, who knew Madoff was running a fraud, to funnel money into the Ponzi scheme, Picard said.

According to the trustee, Kohn ran her own complex scheme centered on Bank Medici, parts of which overlapped with Madoff’s own fraudulent enterprise, delivering $9.1 billion into the Ponzi scheme. They funneled $4 billion of the total through feeder funds including Primeo Fund, Thema International, Herald Fund Alpha Prime Fund, Senator Fund and Herald (Lux), which placed all of their investors’ money with Madoff, according to Picard.

Shortly before Madoff confessed, in December 2008, Kohn withdrew $536 million from Madoff’s firm, Picard said, and took steps to hide her connection to the money manager.

Both articles are worth reading in-full, of course, but if you don't have the time know that Picard is going after a shitload of banks all over the world which might have fed off of Madoff's scheme or used Madoff's scheme to augment their own ponzi schemes. And what of the governmental oversight of the SEC? Well, Picard has until Saturday to decide whether or not to sue the Securities and Exchange Comission, itself, which "conducted multiple examinations of Madoff over many years without uncovering any reason to shut down his operation."

It would be a very nice 2011 if Picard brought suit against the SEC and WikiLeaks drops (at least) its Bank of America Bomb- purportedly 5 gigabytes worth from a top executive's hard drive.

PB

[HEyHEY]

1. What were the religions of those who helped him?

Cause I really give a fuck if they're jewish or Christian too.

[Hannah Bell]

2. i thought the same, but that was the haaretz headline. can't blame the op for using

the same header a leading israeli paper did.

[HEyHEY]

3. I realize that, the comment was directed at the article.

[Poll_Blind]

4. Dunno, I puzzled over that too. Since it's an Israeli newspaper sometimes they'll...

...clarify whether the story is about a Jew or not- but really, not very often. In previous pieces in the Israeli press about Madoff, I know they made a point of mentioning that he was Jewish and that he'd ripped of some famous Jewish charities (like seriously almost destroyed a few of them, financially). Regardless of what it might sound like to American ears, the Jewish community as depicted in Israeli papers is expected "stick together" and so in cases where a great crime was committed by a Jewish person against other Jews they make a point of it- kind of a double crime, both against individuals and the community as whole.

Maybe like a Salt Lake City paper making a point of mentioning that a particular criminal was also a poobah in the LDS church although I really don't know how workable that metaphor is.

PB

[reformist2]

5. You left out the funny part - her picture.... LOL

[tammywammy]

6. Soul mate indeed.