Bank Medici was a

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...

based in

Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. It was founded in 1994 by banker

Sonja Kohn Sonja Kohn (née Türk; born 5 August 1948 in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian banker. Biography Kohn was born to Jewish refugees from the Holocaust from Eastern Europe. She grew up in Vienna. In the 1970s, with her husband Erwin Kohn, she started ...

and incorporated as a bank in 2003. Bank Medici's president and majority stakeholder was Sonja Kohn. Its main institutional shareholder was

Bank Austria Creditanstalt UniCredit Bank Austria AG, branded and widely referred to as Bank Austria, is an Austrian bank, 96.35% owned by Milan-based UniCredit. It was formed in 1991 by merger of Vienna's Länderbank and Zentralsparkasse, acquired Creditanstalt-Bankverei ...

, Austria's largest banking group. Kohn owned 75% of the bank, and Bank Austria owned the balance."Austria’s ‘Woman on Wall St.’ and Madoff"
by Nelson D. Schwartz and Julia Werdigier ''The New York Times'' January 7, 2009, p. A1 NY edition. Retrieved 1-17-09

Madoff investments

Bank Medici was

investment manager Investment management is the professional asset management of various securities, including shareholdings, bonds, and other assets, such as real estate, to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of investors. Investors may be institutio ...

for

Thema International Fund Thema International Fund PLC, based in Dublin, Ireland, is a Dublin-listed, Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS) III-certified, open-end fund incorporated in Ireland, which was launched in December 1996. It ...

, which invested with

Bernard Madoff Bernard Lawrence Madoff ( ; April 29, 1938April 14, 2021) was an American fraudster and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, worth about $64.8 billion. He was at one time chairman of the NASDAQ s ...

. Bank Medici collected fees of 4.6 million

euro The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...

s for finding investors for Thema in 2007. Following news on 2 January 2009 that the Bank may have lost $3 billion invested with funds run by Madoff, the Austrian government appointed a supervisor to run the bank. On January 7, ''The New York Times'' reported the exposure to Madoff was $2.1 billion, some of which may have come from

Russian oligarchs Russian oligarchs (Russian: олигархи, romanized: ''oligarkhi'') are business oligarchs of the former Soviet republics who rapidly accumulated wealth in the 1990s via the Russian privatisation that followed the dissolution of the Soviet ...

. After the Madoff losses were reported, Ms. Kohn, aged 60 at the time, and her husband Erwin had largely been out of public sight. The Austrian-government-appointed commissioner Gerhard Altenberger has been effectively managing the bank in that time. On January 14, 2009, William Galvin,

Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts The Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth is the Secretary of State (U.S. state government), principal public information officer of the Government of Massachusetts, government of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The Secretary of the Commo ...

, who is in charge of the state's securities issues, filed suit against

Robert Jaffe (stockbroker) Robert M. Jaffe (born 1944) is an American stockbroker. He was a long-time associate of Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff and promoted Madoff's fund to wealthy investors in Massachusetts and Florida. He is vice president of Cohmad Securities Corp ...

, who promoted Madoff's funds to wealthy investors in

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

and

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

. On February 4, compelled to testify, Jaffe invoked his Fifth Amendment right. Marcia Cohn, Maurice Cohn, and Alvin Delaire, Jr. failed to appear. On February 11, 2009, Galvin filed a complaint seeking to revoke the Massachusetts license of Cohmad Securities Corp., an accounting of all Massachusetts investors Cohmad referred to Madoff's company, all the fees it earned doing so (more than $67 million), and a fine. It cited $526,000 in referral fees paid from Madoff Investments, to Cohmad, to Vienna Bank Medici majority owner,

, which she subsequently denied. On May 28, 2009, Bank Medici lost its Austrian banking license. Kohn and the Bank are under investigation.

References

External links

Bank Medici official website
{{2008 economic crisis, state=expanded Bank failures Defunct banks of Austria Banks disestablished in 2009 Madoff investment scandal Companies based in Vienna 2003 establishments in Austria Austrian companies established in 2003 Banks established in 2003 2009 disestablishments in Austria

Madoff investments

See also

Madoff

Other

References

External links