Over the last six months, U.S. Senior District Judge Jed Rakoff has made Irving Picard of Baker & Hostetler look more like Don Quixote than a white knight riding to the rescue of investors who lost billions in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Rakoff has already squelched the Madoff trustee’s fraud claims against the banks that allegedly aided and abetted Madoff’s scheme, as well as cutting off Picard clawback claims that date back more than two years. On Tuesday, in Rakoff’s biggest-dollar ruling in the Madoff case, the judge said Picard does not have standing to pursue a $60 billion racketeering suit against UniCredit and two other foreign banks that allegedly participated in a scheme to funnel $9.1 billion to Madoff in exchange for kickbacks to a woman named Sonja Kohn. (Picard had claimed $20 billion in damages, which can be tripled under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.) More on Reuters here.
