Police in New York are investigating the death of a French investment fund manager who reportedly put $1.4bn (€1bn) of his clients' money into the collapsed scheme operated by Bernard Madoff.
Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, 65, was found dead in his New York office on Tuesday after telling staff he was going to work late.
Mr Villehuchet, co-founder and chief executive of Access International, which invested funds for Europe's high society, was both an investor in and apparent victim of Mr Madoff, a former Wall Street pillar now accused of running a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
He ‘could not cope with the pressure following the outbreak of the scandal,’ one of Mr Villehuchet's close friends said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Mr Villehuchet was managing some €2bn for European clients, of which three quarters had been invested with Mr Madoff when the scandal broke.
Mr Villehuchet was ‘devastated’ and feared his clients would turn against him in the courts.
Officials at Access, which employs 26 workers and managed $3bn before the scandal broke, would not comment.
Prosecutors say that Mr Madoff, 70, has confessed to losing upwards of $50bn over years of running a pyramid scheme, where new investors were secretly fleeced to pay returns to earlier investors, in what may be the biggest scam in the history of Wall Street.
Mr Madoff, former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market and a mainstay of the powerful US Jewish community, is currently free on bail of $10m as police continue their probe.
After the scam was revealed on 11 December, Mr Villehuchet was ‘crushed’ and feared that his clients would sue him, the friend said.
Married without children, Mr Villehuchet ‘was a man of honor and humor, very funny, a keen sailor and suicide seems contradictory to the type of person he was,’ long-time friend Marie-Monique Steckel, president of the French Institute-Alliance Francaise in New York, said.
The Madoff scandal has already sent shockwaves through Mr Madoff's former clients around the world and underlined systemic problems at the heart of the US financial industry and the government agency meant to watch over it.
