Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin’s office has rejected a proposed settlement by an investment firm to repay nearly US$6 million to state investors who lost money in Bernard Madoff’s fraudulent investment scheme.
Galvin spokesman Brian McNiff said on Sunday that his agency is not accepting New York-based Fairfield Greenwich Group’s offer to fully refund nearly a dozen investors in the state because officials are still trying to identify all the affected investors.
Galvin filed a civil fraud complaint against Fairfield Greenwich in April, saying officials were coached by Madoff on how to answer federal investigators’ questions and misrepresented how much they knew. The secretary of state’s securities division has set a hearing for Sept. 9.
The firm disputes Galvin’s allegations.
Fairfield Greenwich spokesman Thomas Mulligan said on Sunday that the firm believed its proposed settlement was fair.
Mulligan said Fairfield Greenwich was not admitting wrongdoing but wanted to settle the Massachusetts case so it could focus on more significant legal action it was facing.
He said the proposed deal includes provisions to repay other Massachusetts investors who are identified later, but not at the full restitution the firm is offering the nearly dozen investors identified so far.
“It would be irresponsible for Fairfield to devote any more time or resources to a case involving at most a dozen people with losses of US$6 million, when Fairfield is facing litigation involving thousands of investors and hundreds of millions of dollars elsewhere,” Mulligan said.
Madoff, 71, is serving 150 years in prison for defrauding investors in a multibillion-dollar pyramid scheme. Fairfield Greenwich was one of the so-called “feeder funds” for Madoff.
Galvin has said the firm invested more than 95 percent of its Sentry Funds’ US$7.2 billion in assets in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.
The company has said it made clear to investors that Madoff held substantially all of the Sentry funds’ assets.
In May, the New York trustee overseeing the liquidation of Madoff’s assets sued Fairfield Greenwich, claiming the firm ignored clear warning signs Madoff was orchestrating a giant fraud and seeking to return US$3.5 billion to pay off claims from burned investors.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
RSS