Daily News owner and real-estate mogul Mort Zuckerman today revealed that his charity lost a whopping $30 million in swindler Bernard Madoff’s alleged investment Ponzi scheme.
“That amount represents more than 10 percent of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Charitable Remainder Trusts assets,” Zuckerman said during an interview with CNBC.
“I had never heard of Madoff, never met him before the scandal broke last week,” said Zuckerman, who also owns US News & World Report.
Zuckerman said he was not personally invested with Madoff and that his charity’s funds were given to the onetime legendary Wall Street whiz by a fund manager, whom he has since fired.
“When I found about it, I was not surprisingly not very happy,” Zuckerman said of his charity’s losses.
The Wall Street Journal further reported that powerhouse movie director Steven Spielberg’s charity, Wunderkinder Foundation, also got burned, investing roughly 70 percent of its money with Madoff. A spokesman said he couldnt comment on whether Spielberg had any of his own money invested.
Among the many Jewish charities that lost money in the scam was Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel’s Foundation for Humanity, according to the Journal.
And New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s family charity also took a bath, investing most of its $14 million trust with Madoff, his lawyer told The Record of Bergen County.
Meanwhile, more European banks revealed that billions of dollars they entrusted to Madoff may have vanished and a second Jewish charity abruptly shut down after losing its entire endowment.
Spanish banking giant Grupo Santander SA, which recently purchased Sovereign, a big US bank, said it placed $3.1 billion of its private banking customers in Madoff’s care through its Optimal Strategic US Equity fund.
BNP Paribas in France said it had more than $350 million at risk. The private Swiss bank Reichmuth & Co. told its hedge-fund investors that $327 million of their money was invested with Madoff. European media also reported Union Bancaire Privée of Switzerland mayve lost $1 billion.
And a spokeswoman for the Royal Bank of Scotland confirmed it had invested with Madoff, but provided no figures.
Early today, Japan’s largest brokerage, Nomura Holdings, said it has lost about $306 million.
Also, the Chais Family Foundation, which donated about $12.5 million a year to Jewish causes in former Soviet states and Israel, closed its doors for good after losing everything with Madoff.
The Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation in Salem, Mass., closed Friday, after losing $8 million.
A neighbor of Madoff’s Upper East Side penthouse said he saw the alleged con artist looking forlorn and puffing a cigar by his window at 3 a.m. yesterday. His wife, Ruth, came and cradled his head in her arms.
No comment was all son Andrew Madoff, the director of trading at his father’s Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, said outside his East 75th Street apartment. Andrew and his brother, Mark, turned in their dad after hed confessed to them.
With Post Wire Services