美证交会就马多夫骗局展开内部调查
马多夫被控诈骗500亿美元
美国证券交易委员会主席考克斯已下令对马多夫投资诈骗案的内部治理政策和关系展开调查。
考克斯在声明中称,至少在1999年,就已经有人向证交会人员对麦道夫提出"可信的、明确的指控",但是工作人员却没有跟进调查。
他说,委员会仅仅依靠麦道夫自愿提供的报表和报告,从未发出要求提交更多信息的传票。
他说,至少10年来证交会未对这些控诉进行彻底调查,"我对此深感担忧"。
考克斯说,他已经要求证交会监察长科茨就之前针对麦道夫的指控进行"彻底、即刻的审查"。
现年70岁的马多夫因曾担任纳斯达克股票市场主席而在投资界备受尊重,上周因涉嫌500亿美元的投资诈骗案而被捕。
马多夫骗局的受害人名单目前日益扩大,西班牙、英国和日本的银行都表示,他们可能因此而面临巨额损失。
BBC记者说,马多夫经营的实际上是一个金字塔式欺诈行为,以新投资者的钱偿付旧投资者。
美国证交会已受到质疑,为什么没有及早发现这个骗局。
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嗯,美国也反腐了。这才有点“民主”精神嘛。
- Re: 美证交会就马多夫骗局展开内部调查(BBC)posted on 12/17/2008
xw wrote:
美证交会就马多夫骗局展开内部调查
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嗯,美国也反腐了。这才有点“民主”精神嘛。
伊利诺州长卖议院席位是腐。马多夫是骗,不是腐。
只是连自己高尔夫俱乐部里的人也骗,慈善金也骗,搞不懂。
- posted on 12/17/2008
Madoff's Lessons For the Market
By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, December 17, 2008; D01
Yes, but is it good for the Jews?
That's the punch line of a long-running joke among those of us who grew up among Jewish parents and grandparents whose first reaction to almost any event would be to calculate how it would affect the tribe.
Looking at life through such a parochial lens is hardly unique to Jews, but for generations of Jews who were subject to various forms of persecution and discrimination, the instinct became ingrained. Arthur Goldberg to the Supreme Court: good. The espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: not so good. The "Godfather" movies breaking box-office records: good (puts spotlight on some other ethnic group). Sandy Koufax refusing to pitch a World Series game on Yom Kippur: bad (encourages anti-Semitism among Dodger fans).
For some, this instinct survives to this day. JTA, a Jewish news service, last week put out an upbeat story on the Blagojevich scandal in Illinois by noting that the governor's arrest has greatly improved the odds that Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky -- a Jew untainted by the scandal -- might be appointed to the Obama seat.
All of which brings us to Bernie Madoff -- "the Jewish T-bill" as he was known affectionately in Palm Beach and on Wall Street because of his reputation for delivering solid, reliable returns to his investors. The Madoff scandal is definitely not good for the Jews -- a shanda far die goyim, as my grandmother would have whispered in Yiddish so as not to upset us children. It's not only that this macher of the Jewish community may wind up holding the world indoor record for financial fraud with his alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Even worse, many of his alleged victims were well-known Jews or Jewish philanthropic organizations, among them the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, which placed about $10 million of its endowment with Madoff.
The fallout from the Madoff scandal extends well beyond Jews, however. It's also an unmitigated disaster for Wall Street, which already stood accused of using complex new financial instruments to create the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. With the Madoff story, it is now revealed that the masters of the universe aren't just too clever by half -- they're not clever at all. For years, they not only allowed themselves to be bamboozled by a con artist but also willingly and enthusiastically served as his market agent, offering friends, relatives and favorite charities the opportunity to invest with their good pal, Bernie Madoff. (So much for the idea that wealthy individuals and "sophisticated" institutional investors don't need the protection of government regulators.)
L'affaire Madoff has also revealed a dirty little secret about a corner of the hedge-fund world known as funds of funds. These are hedge funds that raise money from pension funds, university endowments and wealthy individuals and, for a fee of 1.5 percent a year, invest it in other hedge funds, which charge even higher fees. In return for paying double fees, these middlemen claim to offer investors access to the best hedge funds, which can be choosy about whose money they accept. They also offer the peace of mind that goes with knowing that the funds have been thoroughly checked out.
Now it turns out that some of these funds of funds had parked billions of dollars of their clients' money with Madoff without asking how he could so consistently produce returns in up market or down, or demanding to know why his books were audited by a three-person firm that nobody ever heard of operating out of a broom closet on Long Island. Britain's Man Group, Spain's Banco Santander and Switzerland's Union Bancaire Privee all had funds of funds that lost big money with Madoff. But none put more faith in Bernie than Ascot Partners, a fund of funds run by J. Ezra Merkin, who invested virtually all of the $1.8 billion that had been entrusted to him with Madoff, a close friend and fellow trustee of Yeshiva University.
It will be a while before the full story behind Madoff's scheme finally comes out. But it is already possible to see that this is just the most recent case of a financial disaster that could have been avoided if the professional gatekeepers had done their job.
That was certainly the story behind the failures of Enron, WorldCom and the other blowouts from the stock market bubbles, when auditors allowed their desire to preserve lucrative consulting contracts to warp their judgment and override their concerns about how these companies were keeping their books.
In the more recent fiasco involving mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations and credit-default swaps, it was the failure of the rating agencies to adequately assess the risks of complex securities that led to massive losses for investors who thought, or wanted to believe, that they were buying AAA paper. And in Madoff's case, there seems to be little doubt that competent and uncompromised auditors would have quickly discovered that the firm's investment arm was paying out returns it didn't earn.
It doesn't take a PhD in finance to see the pattern here: Accounting firms and rating agencies are too easily compromised by the fact that they are chosen and paid by the management of the companies whose books they are auditing and securities they are rating. There are simply too many built-in conflicts of interest.
The solution is equally obvious: turn these firms into something akin to a regulated public utility. For any public company or investment fund, or for any newly issued security, auditors and raters should be assigned by exchanges or regulators at random and on a rotating basis. The firms would be paid from the proceeds of a small tax on transactions and new issues, based on rates competitively bid at the beginning of each year. Those firms that make serious mistakes would be subject to significant fines; those that screw up more than that would lose their licenses.
As you might expect, the accounting firms and ratings agencies hate this idea and conjure up all sorts of reasons -- a few of them credible, most of them bogus -- why the system should remain pretty much as it is. What they don't offer is any remedy more credible than "It wasn't our fault, but we won't let it happen again." The vehemence of their opposition probably correlates pretty well with the degree to which their interests are no longer aligned with those of the investing public.
After a decade of these scandals, something needs to be done to restore the public's faith in financial markets. The quickest way to do that is to assure the competence and independence of the system's gatekeepers. That would be good for Wall Street, good for investors and good for companies in desperate need of capital. My guess is that it would also be good for the Jews.
- posted on 12/19/2008
又揪出来个老鼠。Ponzi scheme,我记得国内揪几个非法集资的也是accuse他们用ponzi acheme。凭直觉,我感到没那么简单容易。
证监会从来不肯花钱雇请有才干的金融专家,里面的大都是官僚以及没有金融背景的procecutors。也就是个摆设。
这老mad见谁宰谁,通吃! 宰的大多有钱人,这真叫一报还一报!
Madoff scandal rocks Jewish philanthropic world
By Jacob Berkman · December 14, 2008
Photos
1 out of 2Previous Forward Other Media
As Yeshiva University tallied its damage from the Bernard Madoff scandal, its president, Richard Joel, right, bestowed an honorary doctorate on Rabbi Haskel Lookstein on Dec. 14, 2008. (Yeshiva University)
NEW YORK (JTA) -- The securities fraud of Bernard Madoff has rocked the Jewish nonprofit world -- and the worst may be yet to come.
Madoff, the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, was arrested Dec. 11 after admitting to his board that a hedge fund he ran was essentially a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
At least two foundations have been forced to close because they had invested their funds with Madoff.
The Robert I. Lappin Foundation in Salem, Mass., announced Dec. 12 that it would shut down after losing $8 million -- all of its money. And the Chais Family Foundation, which gives out some $12.5 million each year to Jewish causes in Israel, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, announced its closing Dec. 14.
At least one nonprofit is calling out for help in the wake of Madoff’s collapse. The Gift of Life Foundation, a Jewish bone marrow registry that relied heavily on Madoff as a benefactor, announced on its Web site Sunday that it would immediately need to raise $1.8 million to make up for recent losses.
Sources close to Yeshiva University, where Madoff served as treasurer of the board of trustees and board chairman of the university's Sy Syms School of Business until he resigned last week, said the school has lost at least $100 million. Y.U. officials declined to offer any specifics.
Just as the reverberations of the subprime mortgage collapse are still seen as contributing to the nation's wider economic meltdown, philanthropic insiders say the fallout from Madoff's scheme could be even greater. The insiders note that Madoff and others heavily invested in his fraudulent fund were major supporters of a plethora of nonprofit organizations, served on their boards or advised those organizations on how to invest their money -- in some cases placing large sums of the groups' capital in Madoff’s hands.
Reflecting this sense that the full extent of the damage is still unclear, the executive vice president and CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York said that even though its endowments were not exposed, the organization still could be hurt if donors lost money in the scheme.
“We do not yet know the full extent of the losses that supporters of UJA-Federation and other Jewish institutions have had,” John Ruskay said. “But we have already heard that many major institutions had substantial funds invested, as did foundations. Already in the context of a very challenging economic environment this will present another significant difficulty. We don’t know yet the extent of the wreckage.”
Reports are trickling out in the national media about prominent businessmen from across the country who lost money in Madoff's scheme.
New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon, GMAC Financial Services chairman J. Ezra Merkin and former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman all were reported to have taken significant hits due to their dealings with Madoff, who reportedly would not accept any investment in his fund below $10 million.
Reports have surfaced also that media magnate Mortimer Zuckerman was significantly hurt by investing with Madoff.
In Los Angeles, the Jewish Community Foundation’s $238 million Common Investment Pool lost $18 million it had invested with Madoff, according to a letter sent out by the foundation.
Among other Jewish institutions and foundations believed to be hit by the Madoff scandal: the American Jewish Congress, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation, Elie Wiesel’s Foundation for Humanity and Carl Shapiro’s charitable foundation.
But Merkin, who last week told investors in his hedge fund, Ascot Partners, that all of their money had been defrauded by Madoff, is of particular interest to the Jewish community. He has philanthropic ties to a number of Jewish organizations and institutions, serving as a volunteer investment adviser for many of them, including Yeshiva University. Among other causes with which he is said to be connected are the SAR Academy, a Jewish day school in the Bronx, as well as State of Israel Bonds, The Jewish Campus Life Fund, Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center, the Ramaz School, Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun and the Fifth Avenue Synagogue.
Sources say that several of these entities had money in Ascot, which they now stand to lose because of Merkin's decision to invest so heavily in Madoff's fund. According to Orthodox communal insiders, Ramaz and SAR lost millions between them.
A woman who answered the phone Sunday at one of Merkin's listed numbers suggested that he could be reached in the office Monday.
An official at one major Jewish foundation told JTA that it had been advised to invest with Madoff, but decided against it after concluding that his return-on-investment forecasts seemed too good to be true.
Certainly the extent of the damage to the philanthropic world could become clearer as details emerge in coming days and weeks of just who was invested with Madoff.
With each day since news of the fraud broke, new organizations and funders emerge as victims: Yad Sarah in Israel, the Maimonides school in Boston, Charles I. and Mary Kaplan Foundation in Rockville, Md., the Julian J. Levitt Foundation, are among others to announce losses.
One philanthropic official said there is a lesson to be learned here for the philanthropy world, where Jewish businessmen and philanthropists directed their own private funds and the funds of institutions that they help oversee toward Madoff.
“What really emerges out of this,” said Jeffrey Solomon, the president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is that "people sometimes forget to conduct the due diligence when dealing with others with social prominence -- and especially in the hedge-fund area where people think you have to be really smart to be in hedge funds. In many ways for all investments something like this is tragic, but for nonprofits where boards have the fiduciary responsibility of acting with great prudence, it is even more tragic.”
According to a fund-raiser who has been scouring recent 990 tax filings to see how this might affect his nonprofit, several other major philanthropists have put money in Madoff's hands: As of the end of 2007, Sandy Gottesman had $20 million of his foundation's $144 million invested with Madoff and Robert Beren had two foundations with more than that in endowments invested with Ascot. U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) says his foundation has about $15 million invested with Madoff.
Yeshiva University issued a statement via e-mail to JTA on Sunday.
“We are shocked at this revelation,” the university said. “Bernard Madoff has tendered his resignation from all positions affiliated with the university and involvement with the university. Our lawyers and accountants are investigating all aspects of his relationship to Yeshiva University. We reserve our comments until we complete our investigation.”
- posted on 12/24/2008
Investor who lost $1.4B to Madoff kills himself
Wednesday December 24, 12:13 am ET
By Adam Goldman, Associated Press Writer
Investor who lost more than $1 billion in Madoff scandal commits suicide in Manhattan office
NEW YORK (AP) -- He was a distinguished investor who traced his lineage to the French aristocracy, hobnobbed with members of European high society and sailed around the world on fancy yachts.
But after losing more than $1 billion of his clients' money to Bernard Madoff, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet had enough. He locked the door of his Madison Avenue office and apparently swallowed sleeping pills and slashed his wrists with a box cutter, police said.
A security guard found his body Tuesday morning, next to a garbage can placed to catch the blood.
The bloody scene marked a grisly turn in the Madoff scandal in which money managers and investors were ensnared in an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme. De la Villehuchet is believed to have lost about $1.4 billion to Madoff.
No suicide note was found, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
De la Villehuchet, 65, was an esteemed financier who tapped his upper-crust European connections to attract clients. It was not immediately clear how he knew Madoff or who his clients were.
He grew increasingly subdued after the Madoff scandal broke, drawing suspicion among janitors at his office Monday night when he demanded that they be out of there by 7 p.m. Less than 13 hours later, his body was found.
His death came as swindled investors began looking for ways to recoup their losses. Funds that lost big to Madoff are also facing investor lawsuits and backlash for failing to properly vet Madoff and overlooking red flags that could have steered them away. It's not immediately known what kind of scrutiny de la Villehuchet was facing over his losses.
De la Villehuchet (pronounced veel-ou-SHAY) comes from rich French lineage, with the Magon part of his name referring to one of France's most powerful families. The Magon name is even listed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, a monument commissioned by Napoleon in 1806.
"He's irreproachable," said Bill Rapavy, who was Access International's chief operating officer before founding his own firm in 2007.
De la Villehuchet's firm enlisted intermediaries with links to wealthy Europeans to garner investors. Among them was Philippe Junot, a French businessman and friend who is the former husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, and Prince Michel of Yugoslavia.
De la Villehuchet, the former chairman and chief executive of Credit Lyonnais Securities USA, was also known as a keen sailor who regularly participated in regattas and was a member of the New York Yacht Club.
He lived in an affluent suburb in Westchester County with his wife, Claudine. They have no children. There was no answer Tuesday at the family's two-story house. Phone calls to the home and de la Villehuchet's office went unanswered.
Guy Gurney, a British photographer living in Connecticut, was friends with de la Villehuchet. The two often sailed together and competed in a regatta in France in November.
"He was a very honorable man," Gurney said. "He was extraordinarily generous. He was an aristocrat but not a snob. He was a real person. When he was sailing, he was one of the boys."
The two were supposed to have dinner last Friday but Gurney called the day before to cancel because of the weather. But during the call, de la Villehuchet revealed he had been ensnared in Madoff scandal.
"He sounded very subdued," Gurney said.
Gurney said de la Villehuchet was happily married to his wife.
"I can't imagine what it's like for her now," he said.
Associated Press Writers Tom Hays, Rachel Beck and Joe Bel Bruno and the AP News Research Center in New York; Jim Fitzgerald in New Rochelle, N.Y.; and Joelle Diderich in Paris contributed to this report.
- Re: 美证交会就马多夫骗局展开内部调查(BBC)posted on 12/24/2008
De La Villehuchet is a next town neighbor. Sad. May he rest in peace. - Re: 美证交会就马多夫骗局展开内部调查(BBC)posted on 12/24/2008
do you know him?
rzp wrote:
De La Villehuchet is a next town neighbor. Sad. May he rest in peace. - Re: 美证交会就马多夫骗局展开内部调查(BBC)posted on 12/24/2008
no, not directly.
liu wrote:
do you know him?
rzp wrote:
De La Villehuchet is a next town neighbor. Sad. May he rest in peace. - Re: 美证交会就马多夫骗局展开内部调查(BBC)posted on 12/25/2008
It indeed seems very strange that SEC never lauched serious investigation of Madoff, given so many people raised questions about its returns.
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