HSBC sued for $9bn over Madoff fraud

6th Dec 2010 12:35

A court-appointed trustee trying to recover funds for people who were defrauded by the financier Bernard Madoff is suing HSBC for $9bn (£5.7bn).The trustee, Irving Picard, accuses the bank of failing to act on signals that should have prompted it to stop channelling funds to Madoff's operations. He says that HSBC helped funnel money to Madoff through feeder funds in Europe, the Caribbean and Central America.If HSBC had acted on the warnings 'the Madoff Ponzi scheme would have collapsed years, billions of dollars, and countless victims sooner,' Picard said.Picard is also seeking $6.4bn from the US bank JP Morgan Chase and $2bn from UBS. A lawsuit has been filed in a court in New York.