Madoff to meet SEC deadline on assets: lawyer
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Accused swindler Bernard Madoff will send U.S. regulators a list of his assets, liabilities and property by Wednesday's court-ordered deadline, his lawyer said.
A U.S. judge had ordered Madoff, an investment adviser who is under house arrest after being charged with a purported $50 billion fraud, to provide the information before or on December 31 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigating civil charges against him.
"That material will be filed today," said Madoff's attorney Ira Lee Sorkin. "We are in the process of preparing it. It will be done pursuant to the court order."
Sorkin declined further comment and a spokesman for the SEC declined comment.
In general, the regulator is not required to immediately publicly file such disclosures with the courts, which means investors apparently bilked by Madoff will have to wait to find out how much he has left and where it is.
The information provided by Madoff becomes part of the investigation into how Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was run and how losses can be recovered by investors. They include the wealthy, banks and charities all over the world in what could be Wall Street's biggest-ever fraud.
Madoff, a former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, was also criminally charged on December 11 by U.S. prosecutors in New York but he has not appeared in court to formally answer the charges.
The SEC complaint said Madoff, 70, admitted to one or more employees -- later revealed to be his sons -- "that for many years he has been conducting a Ponzi scheme through the investment adviser activities of BMIS and that BMIS has liabilities of approximately $50 billion."
Ponzi schemes are investment frauds in which early investors are paid with money from new clients.
The business had been insolvent for years and Madoff said he had between $200 million and $300 million left, according to the court document.
On December 18, U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton, who is handling the civil case, ordered Madoff and his firm to provide the SEC "on or before December 31 a verified written accounting of all assets, liabilities and property currently held, directly or indirectly."
The order said this included bank accounts, brokerage accounts, investments, business interests, loans, lines of credit and "real and personal property, describing each asset and liability, its current location and amount."
On Tuesday, a bankruptcy court judge approved the transfer of $28.1 million to the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's firm from a bank account held by the firm.
The trustee and the group overseeing the liquidation described the agreement as "an initial recovery of assets" for satisfying customer claims.
(Reporting by Grant McCool; Editing by Brian Moss)
