The Guardian – Top banks and hedge funds must have known Bernard Madoff was running a giant Ponzi scheme, the convicted fraudster said in the first public interview since his arrest in December 2008.
“They had to know,” Madoff told The New York Times. “But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.’ ” He told the paper that financial institutions “banks and funds were complicit in one form or another”.
Madoff’s statements will come as another blow to the reputations of banks including HSBC, Citigroup and JP Morgan that are currently facing law suits brought by Irving Picard, the trustee representing Madoff’s victims. Over the last few months Picard has filed suits seeking $90bn (£55bn) in damages and fictional profits he claims the banks and others made from Madoff’s scheme over the years.
