Britain’s Role in Madoff Fraud Significant
March 30th, 2009 at 11:48 am - by admin
Regulators in England said that Bernard Madoff Investment Securities’ office in London, England may have played the largest part in orchestrating the Ponzi scheme which has ridiculed and hurt hundreds of investors.
The U.K. Serious Fraud Office, a prosecuting and investigative which concentrates the majority of its resources on very large cases of fraud — such as that run by Bernard Madoff over the last year — released details Friday suggesting that the London office of Madoff’s firm had a number of very large, suspicious transactions with the New York office.
Additionally, the SFO’s investigators revealed that Ruth Madoff was paid no less than $2 million in November 2008 from the British office, right before her husband’s arrest: a point which may provide evidence for prosecutors attempting to recover funds.
Analysts suspect this transaction may have been evidence in the freezing of Ruth’s office. Ruth and her lawyers still uphold that she had no understanding nor knowledge of her husband’s fraud.
At this point, little information has been revealed with regard to criminal charges, nor whether anyone at the London office was knowingly involved in the financial fraud.
Mr. Madoff himself explained multiple transactions between the New York and London offices reaching scopes of at least $1 billion U.S. at his trial, saying that the purpose was “to make it appear as though there were actually securities transactions executed on behalf of my investment advisory clients,” providing the basis for his additional charges of money laundering. These transactions may have been on-going for over five years.

