Picard Says Funds Can’t Skirt $10M Madoff Clawback Suit

Madoff wind-down trustee Irving Picard asked a New York bankruptcy court Tuesday not to dismiss a $10 million clawback claim, saying the defendants, a group of individual trusts, are mistakenly fixating on a good-faith issue that’s not applicable. Picard says the defendants were transferred $10 million in the last two years. The funds seek to dismiss that clawback claim on good-faith grounds, but attorneys for Picard say the validity of the claim has nothing to do with good faith. Instead, they say, it centers on value, a separate element required for a successful defense against the claim. “The issue in the defendants’ motion — to which we responded today — is solely about value, not whether the defendants received transfers in good faith,” BakerHostetler’s Dominic Gentile, an attorney for the SIPA trustee, told Law360 on Wednesday. More on Law360 here.