Alleged $50B Madoff Fraud is Keeping a Lot of Law Firms Busy
More than 30 law firms around the world are representing an estimated 3 million alleged victims of the claimed $50 billion Ponzi scheme that Bernard Madoff is accused of running as a purported hedge fund.
“Our calculations are that at least 3 million people were affected by the Madoff affair, 3 million people who could be directly or indirectly affected by the case,” attorney Javier Cremades, who heads the Spanish law firm of Cremades Calvo-Sotelo, said at a news conference in Madrid, reports Agence France-Presse. He based his estimate on information compiled by the 30-plus law firms.
As discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, the firm, along with local counsel, filed a Madoff-related class action against Banco Santander SA in federal court in Florida last week.
Meanwhile, the New York lawyer liquidating Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities under the Securities Investor Protection Act is planning to bring in the United Kingdom-based Lovells law firm to help identify and pursue the potential recovery of foreign assets of the brokerage, according to Reuters.
Attorney Irving Picard, who joined Baker and Hostetler as a partner late last month, made the request yesterday in a filing in federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan.
“Lovells partners in London charge as much as 610 pounds ($875) an hour, according to Picard’s filing. He proposed that the firm’s lawyers be compensated for their Madoff work at their normal hourly rates, less a 10 percent discount,” the news agency notes.
