There has been little talk about Peter with so much focus on Bernard Madoff following his arrest. However, if you are a believer, as I am, that Bernard Madoff could not have run so elaborate a Ponzi scheme on his own. Perhaps, Bernie could have come up with the concept, but if for no other reason, time alone would not have allowed Bernard to act alone.
That brings Peter into question. Peter was the No. 2 man at the Madoff enterprise. It has been reported that he worked side by side with Bernard for over 40 years. In fact, Bernie is said to have confessed to Peter the night before he broke the news to his sons.
Peter B. Madoff, the younger brother and longtime business partner of Bernard L. Madoff, has said that his brother disclosed his huge fraud scheme to him the evening before confessing to his sons, according to people briefed on the chronology of the scandal.
The timing of the confessions raises questions about whether Peter Madoff had an obligation to report his brother’s alleged $50 billion Ponzi schemeto federal authorities immediately, as the Madoff sons did when their father informed them the next day, Dec. 10.
Was Peter in a position to know what Bernard was up to?
Besides being a lawyer by training, Peter Madoff was senior managing director and the chief compliance officer for his brother’s firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.
Okay, so maybe I’m not the brightest light on the tree, but “chief compliance officer” should have known what was going on. Otherwise, what kind of compliance could it have been?
Interestingly, according to the Wall Street Journal
In a firm defined by family ties, Bernard, 70 years old, and Peter, 63, were especially close. With an office a few feet from his brother, Peter helped create innovative electronic-trading systems on which much of Madoff Securities’ success and reputation was built. For the past two decades, Peter ran the day-to-day trading operations of what the firm described as its core business.
Maybe Peter didn’t know anything or participate in the Ponzi scheme. However, if were as close to Bernard as suggested in all the reports, Bernard was either successfully lying to Peter for years and years or Bernie is trying to take the hit for the entire family.
It appears that immediately following Bernard Madoff’s arrest:
In the initial days after Bernard’s arrest, Peter was the only senior Madoff at the firm that continued to go into the office. He spent time talking with investigators and later encouraged employees to be cooperative, according to co-workers.
Peter stopped showing up in the office sometime before Christmas, employees say.
There is something that is just not kosher in this scandal.
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