Madoff Liquidators in U.S., U.K. Agree to Cooperate

Date: Monday, June 1, 2009
Author: Karen Gullo

The trustees liquidating Bernard Madoff’s defunct money-management firms in the U.S. and U.K. agreed on guidelines to cooperate on recovering assets that each may have an interest in.

U.S. Trustee Irving Picard said in a bankruptcy court filing in New York today that he and three U.K.-based liquidators of Madoff Securities International Ltd., the U.K.- based unit of Bernard Madoff’s money-management firm, had entered cross-border insolvency and information-sharing protocols to streamline the recovery process.

The two entities will notify each other of court proceedings, share non-public information and assist each other in the recovery of assets, according to the filing.

Madoff, 71, pleaded guilty in March and faces as many as 150 years in prison when he is sentenced for using money from new customers to pay off earlier investors. Picard, a lawyer with Baker & Hostetler LLP in New York, has said that purported trades on years’ worth of Madoff customer statements were never executed.

U.K.-based Madoff Securities International Ltd. filed for bankruptcy protection in Florida in April and sued Bernard’s brother Peter for “unjust enrichment.”

The case is In re. Bernard L. Madoff, 09-11893, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Gullo in San Francisco at kgullo@bloomberg.net