[2][4][5][8] In return for finding investors, Bank Medici collected fees of 4.6 million euros from Thema International Fund in 2007.
[5] Thema Fund was distributed to investors by Genevalor, Benbassat & Cie., an investment adviser based in Geneva, Switzerland.
[13][14] Reuters wrote after the scandal broke: That was the Madoff universe, where regulators vanished and investors didn't care.
[3][15][16] Individual Thema investors sued Thema International Fund and 27 other defendants, including custodian bank HSBC, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2009, but in January 2012 the US court held that Ireland was a more appropriate forum to hear the case against HSBC, and dismissed the U.S.
[19][21][22] The case focused on the bank's role and potential liability as "custodian" to the investment fund that deposited money with Madoff.
However, no sooner had the bank transfer happened than the Madoff Trustee sought, and won, an injunction preventing Thema from distributing the HSBC settlement proceeds to its shareholders on the basis that the trustee considered some of Thema's shareholders to be Madoff 'bad actors.