Bank Medici was a

bank A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, 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 m ...

based in

Vienna, Austria Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. It was founded in 1994 by banker

Sonja Kohn Sonja Kohn (née Türk; born 5 August 1948) 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 an import-export bu ...

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, 99,9965% owned by Milan-based pan-European banking group UniCredit. Bank Austria was formed in 1991 by merger of Vienna's Länderbank and Zentralspar ...

, 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 (sometimes referred to more generally as financial asset management) is the professional asset management of various securities, including shareholdings, bonds, and other assets, such as real estate, to meet specified inve ...

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 financial criminal and financier who was the admitted mastermind of the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, worth an estimated $65 billion. He was at one time ...

. Bank Medici collected fees of 4.6 million

euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

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 () 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 Union. The failing Soviet state left the ownershi ...

. 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 secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a constitutional officer in the executive branch of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Originally appointed under authority of the English Crown pursuant to the Charter of the Massachusetts Ba ...

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

Robert Jaffe Robert Jaffe may refer to: * Robert Jaffe (producer) * Robert Jaffe (stockbroker) * Robert Jaffe (physicist) {{hndis, Jaffe, Robert ...

, who promoted Madoff's funds to wealthy investors in

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

and

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

. 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