Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
New York - The trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard Madoff's assets sued a prominent hedge fund manager for more than $500m on Thursday, claiming he was aware the disgraced financier was a swindler.
The complaint filed in bankruptcy court in Manhattan called J Ezra Merkin "a sophisticated investment manager who was a close business and social associate of Madoff."
Merkin managed several funds through his Gabriel Capital Corp that withdrew more than $500m in "nonexistent principal" from Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities in the 13 years before Madoff's massive pyramid scheme imploded.
In addition, the suit said Merkin "'earned' tens of millions of dollars in management and performance fees, even though he knew or should have known that (the firm) was engaged in fraud."
A lawyer for Merkin, Andrew Levander, said the claim had no basis and that Merkin would fight it "vigorously."
Madoff, 70, pleaded guilty in March to charges that his secretive investment advisory operation was a multibillion-dollar scam. The former Nasdaq chairperson faces up to 150 years in prison.
The court-appointed trustee has frozen Madoff's bank accounts, sold off legitimate portions his business and filed suits to reclaim ill-gotten gains of his fraud. The money will be used to pay claims brought by thousands of burned investors.
- AP