Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz are not the most sympathetic defendants, and public anger over Bernie Madoff’s crimes is still high, but none of that excuses the way the owners of the Mets baseball franchise were pursued and vilified as alleged partners in his Ponzi scheme. So there’s justice in their settlement this week with bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard, whose abusive quasi-prosecutorial methods backfired.
More in the Wall Street Journal [...]
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From Megan’s Law to JFK Airport, laws, rules and landmarks across the country are named after victims, heroes or important people. So why are financial regulators making Jon Corzine the eponymous hero of change? The National Futures Association (NFA) is contemplating implementing the “Corzine Rule” which will require principals of a futures firm to sign off on transferring sizable amounts of customer funds. But, why should Corzine get the glory? There is no “Madoff rule” or “Enron law.” The offenses committed by Madoff, Enron and others over the years spawned regulations that were not named by the perpetrators presumably because the changes were so necessary and so great that the origin of the need for investor protection would not be forever connected to one individual or firm. More on Business Insider [...] The financier Allen Stanford on Thursday lost his bid for a new trial, 16 days after being convicted for running an estimated $7 billion Ponzi scheme. U.S. District Judge David Hittner in Houston turned down Stanford’s request for a new trial in a brief order, without explaining his reasons. Read Reuters report [...] The liquidator of Bernard Madoff’s firm appealed a court ruling that tossed most of his $59 billion in claims against UniCredit SpA (UCG), Sonja Kohn and other defendants, following earlier appeals seeking to recover about $30 billion in damages from banks. Madoff trustee Irving Picard’s notice of appeal and document record were transmitted today to U.S. District Court in Manhattan by a U.S. appeals court, according to filings. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff on Feb. 21 dismissed Picard’s claims under the racketeering statute, which allows for triple damages, saying he couldn’t prove his allegations. Read Bloomberg report [...] After several drinks at a Greek restaurant on Manhattan’s Third Avenue in the summer of 2006, two computer programmers at Bernard Madoff’s investment firm asked their supervisor whether the boss’s business was a scam. Chief Financial Officer Frank DiPascali laughed off the question, telling George Perez and Jerome O’Hara that Madoff was honest. DiPascali would later tell the FBI he wondered why they took so long to ask. Read San Francisco Chronicle report [...] APRIL 2nd DEADLINE FOR WITHDRAWAL OF REFERENCE An important message for those seeking removal of their clawback case from the Lifland bankruptcy court to the District Court A joint order has been issued by the United States District Court and the Bankruptcy Court setting April 2, 2012 as a cut-off date to file Withdrawal of Reference motions in Madoff Liquidation claw back cases. A Congressional subcommittee voted on Wednesday to subpoena an MF Global executive at the center of a federal investigation into wrongdoing at the firm. The executive, Edith O’Brien, must appear next week before Congress for a hearing about the chaotic final days before MF Global filed for bankruptcy in October. The subpoena came despite Ms. O’Brien’s assertion that she would not answer questions from lawmakers; she was expected to invoke her constitutional right against self-incrimination. More in the New York Times [...] Allen Stanford, the financier convicted of running an estimated $7 billion Ponzi scheme, has asked for a new trial, citing the media’s use of Twitter in the courtroom and a lack of time to prepare his defense. Stanford, who turns 62 on Saturday, was convicted on March 6 by a Houston federal jury on 13 of 14 counts related to what prosecutors said was the sale of bogus certificates of deposit from his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank Ltd. More on Reuters [...] Large numbers of whistleblowers overseas are reporting fraud, corruption and other corporate wrongdoing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s whistleblower program for two reasons: 1) The SEC, as required by the Dodd-Frank Act, has set up a whistleblower program that offers strong financial incentives to blow the whistle (rewards of up to 30 percent of amounts recovered) that recognize the risks to the whistleblower’s career and livelihood that come from stepping forward. 2) Their own countries offer few, if any, incentives to whistleblowers. See Forbes report [...] TWO years before Carol Lovil’s life savings disappeared in R. Allen Stanford’s Ponzi scheme, she lost her husband, John, to cancer. While grieving, she asked her financial adviser at the Stanford Financial Group in Houston what she should do. Two things still haunt her, Mrs. Lovil said in an interview this month. She said she asked if the money she had in certificates of deposit issued by Stanford International Bank was guaranteed. It was, she said he told her. More in the New York Times [...] |
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