Madoff Trustee Seeks $150 Million From Gibraltar Bank
By Christopher Scinta and David Glovin, Bloomberg.com
The trustee appointed to liquidate Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC is seeking $150 million transferred from the firm to Banque Jacob Safra (Gibraltar) Ltd., the first such action aimed at recovering assets withdrawn by a Madoff client.
Irving Picard, appointed under the Securities Investor Protection Act, filed the lawsuit today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The October transfer was for the benefit of British Virgin Islands-based Vizcaya Partners Ltd., also named as a defendant.
“The Trustee seeks to set aside such transfer and preserve the property for the benefit of BLMIS’s defrauded customers,” according to the complaint filed by Picard’s lawyers at Baker & Hostetler LLP.
The Vizcaya account was opened on Dec. 21, 2001, by its custodian, Banque Safra-France SA, and Vizcaya invested $327.2 million with Madoff through 26 wire transfers to an account at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York beginning in January 2002, according to the complaint.
Banque Jacob Safra (Gibraltar) is based in London and operates in Gibraltar. Picard has said he is seeking assets in Gibraltar and recently sought permission to hire lawyers to represent him there.
Banque Safra-France is a unit of Banque Safra-Luxembourg SA, a closely held bank based in Luxembourg. A message left at Banque Safra’s Geneva office wasn’t immediately answered. Efforts to contact Vizcaya were unsuccessful.
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