Medici, Kohn und Madoff

Es kommt nicht oft vor, dass eine Geschichte zu Österreich einen ganzen Tag lang die Topnachricht auf der Homepage des "Wall Street Journal" ist. Weder Jörg Haider, noch Josef F. aus Amstetten oder Julius Meinl V. haben das geschafft.

Der früheren Bank Medici und deren Mehrheitseigentümerin Sonja Kohn ist diese zweifelhafte Ehre nun zuteil geworden. Deren Verwicklung in den Fall Madoff zieht laut der Zeitung immer weitere Kreise.

Hier die Geschichte aus dem "Wall Street Journal" zum Nachlesen:

By DAVID CRAWFORD

U.S., U.K. and Austrian prosecutors are investigating a former Austrian fund manager they believe was paid more than $40 million in kickbacks to funnel billions of dollars of investments to Bernard Madoff.

Prosecutors from all three investigations believe Mr. Madoff paid kickbacks to Sonja Kohn while she was chairwoman of Austria's Bank Medici AG via separate companies she controlled, according to affidavits detailing the investigations and hundreds of documents collected by Austrian prosecutors that were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

In exchange for the kickbacks, prosecutors allege, Ms. Kohn turned three Bank Medici funds into "feeder funds" that supplied Mr. Madoff with an estimated $3.5 billion from European investors.

U.S. and U.K. prosecutors filed the affidavits to request documents, bank records and witness statements from their Austrian counterparts to further their own investigations.

The three investigations, which are separate and at an early stage, offer a picture of how Mr. Madoff may have persuaded fund managers abroad to find investors for Mr. Madoff. The investigations don't claim that Ms. Kohn knew the nature of Mr. Madoff's $65 billion Ponzi scheme.

Ms. Kohn hasn't been charged with wrongdoing.

"I am actually the greatest Madoff victim. It is a tragedy for my family, my company and for me personally," Ms. Kohn said by phone on Wednesday. She declined to discuss details of the allegations against her.

Ms. Kohn, a 60-year-old Viennese former Wall Street penny-stock broker, has repeatedly denied prior knowledge of Mr. Madoff's $65 billion fraud or any wrongdoing. A judge sentenced Mr. Madoff to 150 years in prison on Monday.

A spokeswoman for Bank Medici said neither Ms. Kohn nor the bank had received kickbacks.

According to an April affidavit from the Justice Department filed with Vienna prosecutors, Ms. Kohn is under investigation in the U.S. for potential criminal charges of conspiracy, fraud and wire fraud in connection with the alleged kickbacks.

The fraud charges carry maximum jail terms of 20 years each, while conspiracy carries a maximum five-year term, according to the affidavit.

Regulators have filed civil, but not criminal, charges against several fund managers who steered their clients' money to the Madoff firm.

Gabriel Lansky, a Vienna lawyer who represents Mr. Madoff's fraud victims in Europe, said that a criminal conviction of any feeder fund to Mr. Madoff would give victims greater rights to recover lost assets from the convicted parties.

Bank Medici, which is part of the U.S. Justice Department investigation, is 75% owned by Ms. Kohn and 25% by Bank Austria, a unit of Italy's UniCredit SpA. U.S. prosecutors allege that Ms. Kohn acted on her own behalf in receiving kickbacks. U.S. prosecutors allege that Ms. Kohn and Bank Medici failed to disclose to investors that their funds were being invested wholly with Mr. Madoff. The affidavits don't suggest Bank Medici knew of the alleged kickbacks to Ms. Kohn.

Representatives for Bank Austria and UniCredit referred all questions to Bank Medici.

Two streams of alleged payments are under investigation. Early this year, U.S. investigators noticed a flow of payments totaling about $32 million over 10 years from Mr. Madoff's advisory firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, to Infovaleur Inc., a New York company that was "owned by Sonja Kohn personally," according to a U.S. affidavit filed on April 6.

The U.S. affidavit said U.S. prosecutors were unable to locate a registration for Infovaleur Inc.

"It does not appear that Kohn, or Bank Medici, ever disclosed to investors in the feeder fund that Kohn was personally receiving payments from Madoff at the same time as she was investing the feeder funds with [Mr. Madoff's fund]," the affidavit says. Mr. Madoff was "actually in full control" of Bank Medici's investments, according to the affidavit.

Prospectuses for the Bank Medici funds that Ms. Kohn oversaw claimed they were investing in a basket of 35 to 50 Standard & Poor's 100-stock index shares, as well as in U.S. Treasurys, the affidavit says.

The prospectuses didn't mention Mr. Madoff or his company, when in fact all of the funds' money was being forwarded to Mr. Madoff, the affidavits say.

Meanwhile, Grant Thornton U.K. LLP, the accounting firm liquidating Mr. Madoff's London-based unit, Madoff Securities International Ltd., discovered a bank receipt that triggered a U.K. investigation, according to a March 24 affidavit filed with Austrian prosecutors by the Serious Fraud Office, a U.K. government agency responsible for prosecuting complex fraud cases.

The bank receipt referenced a check that Madoff International paid to a company called Erko Inc. and which was deposited in a Vienna bank account, according to the U.K. affidavit.

The affidavit said the Serious Fraud Office had determined that both Erko and the bank account were controlled by Ms. Kohn. The fraud office also said in the affidavit it was unable to locate a registration for Erko.

The U.K. affidavit alleges that Mr. Madoff's London subsidiary paid about £7 million ($11.5 million) over five years to Erko. A British prosecutor alleges in the document that Mr. Madoff attempted to hide payments to Ms. Kohn by "falsely" declaring them in his company accounts as payment for research reports.

"It is suspected that the research papers were completely worthless and that the reports were never in fact used by [Madoff Securities International] for business decisions," the affidavit said.

The Serious Fraud Office is investigating Ms. Kohn in connection with potential criminal charges of money laundering and falsifying documents to receive kickbacks, according to the affidavit.

Representatives for the Vienna State Prosecutor's Office, the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, which is handling the Justice Department investigation, and the U.K. Serious Fraud Office declined to comment.

The U.S. and British affidavits asked Austrian prosecutors to seize or share documents, witness statements and bank records related to companies and accounts controlled as above by Ms. Kohn. The Justice Department also asked to observe an interview with Ms. Kohn.

Ms. Kohn was questioned for three hours in April by Austrian prosecutors at a court in Vienna, with a team of six U.S. officials present from the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the interview, she said she had no recollection of Erko. She said she had produced research for Madoff International, but was never paid for it, according to the court summary

Ms. Kohn answered routine questions, according to the Vienna State Court's nine-page summary of the questioning, such as: Age: 60; Education: high school diploma; Income: none. She also listened to questions based on the U.K. affidavit, but declined to respond, saying the questions were a surprise and she would need to prepare a response, the summary shows.

Mr. Madoff pleaded guilty in a New York court to defrauding billions of dollars from thousands of clients. In a statement to prosecutors, he said he never invested money on behalf of clients. A Ponzi scheme pays off investors using cash from new investors and works so long as the amount of fresh money flowing into the scheme remains bigger than the amounts being withdrawn.

U.S. prosecutors say Mr. Madoff depended on feeder funds run by investment advisers such as Ms. Kohn to recruit the large numbers of new investors needed to sustain the fraud.

von Stefan Riecher zum Thema Econobama  |  4 Kommentare