Investor takes own life
Güncelleme Tarihi:
AFP
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Aralık 25, 2008 00:00
WASHINGTON - Thierry de la Villehuchet, the chief executive of Access International, is found dead in his New York office, in what a friend says was a suicide. Access International is among the funds that heavily invested in the fraudulent scheme of Bernard Madoff, who is currently under house arrest.
A French investment manager who plowed 1.5 billion euros ($2.1 billion) into Bernard Madoff's fraudulent scheme was found dead Tuesday in his New York office, in what a friend says was a suicide.
An autopsy was to be performed yesterday on Thierry de la Villehuchet, 65, who was found dead shortly after 7:00 am (12:00 GMT) Tuesday by a security officer of the Madison Avenue building that housed his Access International investment concern, according to the New York police department.
Villehuchet, co-founder and chief executive of Access International, which invested funds for the cream of Europe's high society, was both an investor in and apparent victim of Madoff, a former Wall Street pillar now accused of running a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
He "could not cope with the pressure following the outbreak of the scandal," one of Villehuchet's close friends told Agence France-Presse in Paris, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Villehuchet was managing some two billion euros ($2.79 billion) for European clients, of which three quarters had been invested with Madoff when the scandal broke, added the friend.
Villehuchet was "devastated" and feared his clients would turn against him in the courts, the source said.
"Access was his whole life, and Madoff was a manager in whom he had complete trust. I lunched with him two weeks ago and he said, how lucky it was that Madoff was the only manager still doing well at the moment."
"A perfectly honest guy," according to his friend, Villehuchet had "teams that recorded all of Madoff's operations. He could not imagine those were fake documents."
Confession
Prosecutors say that Madoff, 70, has confessed to losing upwards of $50 billion over years of running a pyramid scheme, where new investors were secretly fleeced to pay returns to earlier investors, in what may be the biggest scam in the history of Wall Street.
Madoff, former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market and a mainstay of the powerful American Jewish community, is currently free on bail of $10 million as police continue their probe.
After the scam was revealed on December 11, Villehuchet was "crushed" and feared that his clients would sue him, the friend said.
"I had known him since 1992. He was one of a kind, a very warm, hard-working man."
Married without children, Villehuchet "was a man of honor and humor, very funny, a keen sailor and suicide seems contradictory to the type of person he was," long-time friend Marie-Monique Steckel, president of the French Institute-Alliance Francaise in New York, told AFP.
The Madoff scandal has already sent shockwaves through Madoff's former clients around the world and underlined systemic problems at the heart of the US financial industry and the government agency meant to watch over it.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, last week announced a probe into how the financial regulatory body failed to detect the alleged fraud scheme despite a decade of warning signs.
The agency's beleaguered chairman, Christopher Cox, in an interview denied that lax oversight led to the massive Ponzi scheme that has ruined untold private and institutional investors around the world. He called the Madoff case "a big asterisk" in what he considers his agency's otherwise commendable record.
"The case is very troubling for that reason. It's what the SEC's good at. And it's inexplicable," Cox said.
More to come
Only about 60 percent of those affected by the Madoff scandal have been identified so far, but they are said to include private individuals who invested their life savings for their golden years, some of the world's largest banks, and philanthropic organizations whose endowments in many cases were entirely wiped out.
The scandal also has bilked a long line of wealthy European and American investors, including the owner of the New York Mets baseball team Fred Wilpon; Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar; New York media mogul Mort Zuckerman; former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman; and New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg, among many others.Turkish victim of Madoff fraud
An unnamed Turkish investor is among those who lost million of dollars in the Madoff scandal, Vatan newspaper reported yesterday.
Basing its story on "a banker working at an international investment institution," the Turkish investor had $23 million invested in funds that invested in Bernard Madoff Investment. Requesting anonymity, the banker said: "There are a lot of Turkish investors that keep their money in banks abroad and are interested in investment vehicles in international markets. Foreign banks offer hundreds of different investment choices, including investment funds. Nearly $23 million of a Turkish investor evaporated as his money was invested in a fund, which in turn invested in Madoff."
An autopsy was to be performed yesterday on Thierry de la Villehuchet, 65, who was found dead shortly after 7:00 am (12:00 GMT) Tuesday by a security officer of the Madison Avenue building that housed his Access International investment concern, according to the New York police department.
Villehuchet, co-founder and chief executive of Access International, which invested funds for the cream of Europe's high society, was both an investor in and apparent victim of Madoff, a former Wall Street pillar now accused of running a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
He "could not cope with the pressure following the outbreak of the scandal," one of Villehuchet's close friends told Agence France-Presse in Paris, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Villehuchet was managing some two billion euros ($2.79 billion) for European clients, of which three quarters had been invested with Madoff when the scandal broke, added the friend.
Villehuchet was "devastated" and feared his clients would turn against him in the courts, the source said.
"Access was his whole life, and Madoff was a manager in whom he had complete trust. I lunched with him two weeks ago and he said, how lucky it was that Madoff was the only manager still doing well at the moment."
"A perfectly honest guy," according to his friend, Villehuchet had "teams that recorded all of Madoff's operations. He could not imagine those were fake documents."
Confession
Prosecutors say that Madoff, 70, has confessed to losing upwards of $50 billion over years of running a pyramid scheme, where new investors were secretly fleeced to pay returns to earlier investors, in what may be the biggest scam in the history of Wall Street.
Madoff, former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market and a mainstay of the powerful American Jewish community, is currently free on bail of $10 million as police continue their probe.
After the scam was revealed on December 11, Villehuchet was "crushed" and feared that his clients would sue him, the friend said.
"I had known him since 1992. He was one of a kind, a very warm, hard-working man."
Married without children, Villehuchet "was a man of honor and humor, very funny, a keen sailor and suicide seems contradictory to the type of person he was," long-time friend Marie-Monique Steckel, president of the French Institute-Alliance Francaise in New York, told AFP.
The Madoff scandal has already sent shockwaves through Madoff's former clients around the world and underlined systemic problems at the heart of the US financial industry and the government agency meant to watch over it.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, last week announced a probe into how the financial regulatory body failed to detect the alleged fraud scheme despite a decade of warning signs.
The agency's beleaguered chairman, Christopher Cox, in an interview denied that lax oversight led to the massive Ponzi scheme that has ruined untold private and institutional investors around the world. He called the Madoff case "a big asterisk" in what he considers his agency's otherwise commendable record.
"The case is very troubling for that reason. It's what the SEC's good at. And it's inexplicable," Cox said.
More to come
Only about 60 percent of those affected by the Madoff scandal have been identified so far, but they are said to include private individuals who invested their life savings for their golden years, some of the world's largest banks, and philanthropic organizations whose endowments in many cases were entirely wiped out.
The scandal also has bilked a long line of wealthy European and American investors, including the owner of the New York Mets baseball team Fred Wilpon; Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar; New York media mogul Mort Zuckerman; former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman; and New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg, among many others.Turkish victim of Madoff fraud
An unnamed Turkish investor is among those who lost million of dollars in the Madoff scandal, Vatan newspaper reported yesterday.
Basing its story on "a banker working at an international investment institution," the Turkish investor had $23 million invested in funds that invested in Bernard Madoff Investment. Requesting anonymity, the banker said: "There are a lot of Turkish investors that keep their money in banks abroad and are interested in investment vehicles in international markets. Foreign banks offer hundreds of different investment choices, including investment funds. Nearly $23 million of a Turkish investor evaporated as his money was invested in a fund, which in turn invested in Madoff."