According to law360.com, Irving Picard, the trustee for Bernard Madoff’s investment firm, has filed suit against the American Jewish Congress to recover more than $9.4 million in phony profits the advocacy group and two related entities allegedly took from Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The organization had previously waived the December 11, 2010 filing deadline.
Back in December, eJP reported AJCongress was in settlement discussions with Picard. At the time, Bruce Buechler, the attorney representing the organization said, “We are in the final stages of hopefully reaching an agreement. The reality is we have a deal in place with Picard’s people. Simply put, we just need a little more time to get our boards’ approval.”
Several days later, Richard Gordon, the organizations’ president, told JTA‘s Jacob Berkman, “There is no talk of a clawback from us with the trustee. We, like most organizations, are in discussion with how to settle this and are trying to move toward a solution. There has never been any serious meaningful discussion about a clawback… But Madoff stole approximately $23 million from us. There has been no discussion about [the American Jewish Congress] paying back money.”
In fact, Gordon insisted the organization “was working on an agreement, but it was about how much the organization would receive from Picard, not how much it would pay him.”
We welcome Gordon’s response to this turn of events.
In other Madoff bankruptcy news, on March 10, 2011, as requested in the Motion filed by Picard, the bankruptcy judge for the Madoff Estate approved the Hadassah Settlement, whereby Hadassah will pay, within 60 business days, $45,000,000 of its alleged $77,000,000 clawback exposure. This grants Hadassah the benefit of retaining $32,000,000 of the fictitious profits that it withdrew from the Madoff scheme.
Top