NEW YORK (AFP) — US officials pressed on with a probe into the apparent suicide of a French investment manager ruined in the alleged pyramid scheme of Wall Street titan Bernard Madoff amid more fallout from the widening scandal.
Thierry de la Villehuchet, 65, who lost more than a billion dollars in the scam, was found dead in his Manhattan office early Tuesday with pills around him and his arm slit with a box cutter, the New York City police said.
As chief executive of Access International, Villehuchet was managing some two billion euros (2.79 billion dollars) for European clients, of which three quarters had been invested with Madoff, a source close to the fund manager said.
City authorities carried out an autopsy Wednesday, though results would not be ready until next week pending the outcome of laboratory tests, city officials said.
The death of the French investor came amid more revelations exposing the scale of the fraud, which has seen at least 50 billion dollars in investments evaporate after its manager admitted to running a bogus investment scheme.
"Now blood's on Bernie's hands," read the headline of the New York Post.
Prosecutors said that Madoff , 70, has confessed to losing upwards of 50 billion dollars over years of running a pyramid scheme in which 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 chairman of the Nasdaq stock market and a mainstay of the American Jewish community, Madoff is currently free on bail of 10 million dollars as police continue their probe.
Meanwhile, the philanthropic foundation run by Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel acknowledged on Wednesday losing 15 million dollars to Madoff -- nearly all its assets.
"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 Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity said on its website.
On Tuesday, representatives of around 30 Jewish foundations met in New York to discuss potential actions in the wake of the alleged fraud.
New York University meanwhile filed the latest in what could become an avalanche of lawsuits, the New York Times reported Thursday.
The daily reported that NYU filed a suit in New York State Supreme Court against Ezra Merkin, a money manager who had invested 94 million of the college's funds in Madoff's firm.
The lawsuit against the so-called feeder funds into Madoff's vast investment advisory arm, allege
d that Merkin and two of his funds of placed its money with Madoff without proper notification or inquiry.
The New York Times also reported that federal officials were bringing far less prosecutions linked to fraudulent stock schemes than they did eight years ago.
Citing legal and financial experts, it said slacker enforcement, cutbacks in staffing at the Securities and Exchange Commission and a shift in FBI resources towards fighting terrorism had impacted on probes into securities crimes.
US officials are on pace this year to bring the fewest prosecutions for securities fraud since at least 1991, according to the data, compiled by a Syracuse University research group using Justice Department figures.
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