US authorities on Wednesday investigated the apparent suicide of a French investment manager who lost more than a billion dollars in Wall Street titan Bernard Madoff’s alleged pyramid scheme, amid more fallout from the widening scandal.
Thierry de la Villehuchet (65) was found dead in his Manhattan office early on Tuesday with pills around him and his arm slit with a box cutter, the New York City police commissioner said.
City authorities carried out an autopsy on Wednesday, though results would not be ready until next week pending the outcome of laboratory tests, said New York medical examiner’s office spokesperson Ellen Borakove.
The death of the French investor came amid more revelations exposing the scale of the scandal, which has seen at least $50-billion in investments evaporate after its manager admitted earlier this month to running a fraudulent investment scheme.
”Now blood’s on Bernie’s hands,” read the headline of the New York Post.
Another major investor, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, acknowledged on Wednesday losing $15-million to Madoff — nearly all its assets.
A court reportedly ordered a fund manager, J Ezra Merkin, not to destroy any documents related to Madoff as part of a lawsuit by New York University, which says it lost $24-million in investments.
Villehuchet left no suicide note but friends suggested the aristocrat may have been wracked with guilt over encouraging colleagues and acquaintances to invest with Madoff, and losing about $1,4-billion in client investments.
”Thierry got all his friends involved in this, the people who were closest to him, and he couldn’t stand it,” said his friend and fellow businessman Jean Karoubi.
He was ”undoubtedly naive but a man of honour”, Karoubi added.
As chief executive of Access International, Villehuchet was managing about two billion euros ($2,79-billion) for European clients, of which three quarters had been invested with Madoff when the scandal broke earlier this month, a source close to the fund manager said.
Villehuchet was ”devastated” and feared his clients would turn against him in the courts, the source said.
New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters late on Tuesday that Villehuchet had cuts on his arm when he was found.
”It appears that there were cuts made to his arm, to his wrist, and also to his bicep area with a box cutter. There were pills present; unknown if those pills were ingested,” said Kelly.
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.
The former chairperson of the Nasdaq stock market and a mainstay of the American Jewish community is currently free on bail of $10-million as police continue their probe.
Villehuchet’s Access International Advisors was reportedly the sixth biggest loser of cash in the Madoff scheme, according to published reports.
Fairfield Greenwich Group advisors suffered the largest loss, $7,5-billion, followed by the hedge fund Tremont Group which lost $3,3-billion.
Spanish bank Banco Santander lost $2,87-billion and the British bank HSBC lost one billion dollars.
The philanthropic foundation run by Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was among the myriad of Jewish charities hit by the Madoff funds’ collapse.
”We are deeply saddened and distressed that we, along with many others, have been the victims of what may be one of the largest investment frauds in history,” the foundation, which seeks to fight anti-semitism, said on its website.
On Tuesday, representatives of about 30 Jewish foundations met in New York to discuss potential actions in the wake of the alleged fraud.
A New York state court meanwhile told the fund manager who handled investments for New York University (NYU) to refrain from concealing or destroying any papers related to Madoff, the Wall Street Journal reported.
NYU has accused Merkin, chairperson of GMAC — the financing arm of General Motors that handles a range of lending services — of failing to inform investors or carry out his responsibilities when he turned over the university’s funds to Madoff.
The suit filed this week also names Merkin’s Ariel Fund Ltd. and Gabriel Capital Corporation, as defendants among others. – AFP