Uma Thurman's fiancé, hedge fund manager Arpad Busson, has also been sucked into the vortex. The hedge fund he runs, EIM, has been exposed to about £145million

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Uma Thurman's billionaire fiancé among A-listers swindled by 'Midas Madoff' in world's biggest fraud
By OLINKA KOSTER and DANIEL BATES
Last updated at 2:08 AM on 17th December 2008

From movie director Steven Spielberg to to Uma Thurman's fiancé, Arpad Busson, the list of Hollywood A-listers and billionaire businessmen sucked into the world's biggest financial fraud is growing.

Some of the best-known names in banking and business have been forced to admit failing to spot the outrageous deception which culminated in the arrest of Wall Street deal-maker Bernard Madoff over an alleged £33billion fraud.

British-based firms have lost at least £3.5billion – and it is feared that families will pay the price.


House possessions will rise, bank fees will increase and good-value mortgages will become scarcer, warn financial experts.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Santander – owner of Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley – are among the big names which were taken for a ride.

And the fallout from Madoff's deception has spread far beyond the British high street.

Actress Uma Thurman's fiancé, hedge fund manager Arpad Busson, has also been sucked into the vortex. The hedge fund he runs, EIM, has been exposed to about £145million of products sold by Madoff, who is due to appear in a New York court this afternoon to fulfill his bail requirements. London-based EIM manages about £8.2billion.



Mr Madoff on the trading floor in Manhattan. He posted $10million bail after being arrested last week

The Swiss-born financier, 45, served as a nurse in the French army before being demobilised and enjoying a life of luxury on the Riviera, where tabloid reports claim he posed as a prince to attract the attentions of actress Farrah Fawcett.

He has two sons by his previous fianceé, supermodel Elle MacPherson. The pair never married.

In 2006, Busson was voted the seventh most wanted person at a party in the United Kingdom by Tatler magazine.

Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg's charity, the Wunderkinder Foundation, had a significant portion of its assets invested with Madoff - in 2006, about 70 per cent.

Spielberg and his wife made donations to the charity each year of about £654,000. The charity's exposure to the fraud is unknown.


Losers: Hollywood moguls Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg have lost money invested in Madoff's funds

DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has lost millions in Madoff's scam, The Wall Street Journal reports today.

And that's just Hollywood. The worlds of sport and media have also been affected.

New York Mets baseball team owner Fred Wilpon had investments with Madoff, as did Norman Braman, the former owner of American football team the Philadelphia Eagles and the Forbes-listed 281st richest man in the United States.

New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman's charitable foundation had Charitable Remainder Trust £19.7million invested with Madoff's firm.

Other high-powered charities have been hit, such as Jewish Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel's Foundation for Humanity.


Television cameramen wait outside the home of financier Bernard Madoff in New York's Upper Eastside.He owns a £4million flat in the building

Carl Shapiro, a 95-year-old philanthropist and clothes company founder, had £357 million of his personal fortune invested with Madoff, in addition to £95 million from his family charity - making him the biggest individual loser known, today's Journal reports.

At home, Hampshire County Council is feared to have lost £7.1 million pounds in the Wall Street fraud scandal.

Money from the Hampshire Pension Fund was invested in hedge funds controlled by Madoff.

Along with the insurance firm Axa and a number of local authority pension schemes, they did not realise that the hedge fund business in which they were investing was actually a ‘Ponzi’ pyramid scheme.

This involves paying abnormally high returns to investors out of money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from the profit from any real business.
Madoff, 70, a former chairman of the Nasdaq, the U.S. exchange, was arrested in New York last week and charged with defrauding investors.


Late last night, a federal judge in New York directed that proceedings to liquidate the assets of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC be moved to bankruptcy court.

U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton also ordered that clients of Madoff's private investment business seek relief under a federal statute that set up a special government reserve fund to rescue cheated investors.


According to insiders, the British and other investors in Madoff’s fund were blinded by the fact that they were being offered annual returns before tax of 12 per cent – double the average investment return.

Eddy Weatherill, of the Independent Banking Advisory Service, predicted devastating knock-on effects such as a rise in house repossessions as families
struggle to cope.

Andrew Hagger, a financial expert from the information website Moneynet, said: ‘The consumer is going to pay for this by higher rates, more fees and poor-value products. The banks will have to recoup it somewhere and the consumer will bear the brunt.’

The pensions of workers in dozens of schools, charities, councils, colleges and emergency services have also been put at risk by the Madoff affair.

The Hampshire pension fund said its investments in the scheme totalled £7.1million, 0.3 per cent of its total assets. Another victim was the Merseyside fund, which administers more than 100,000 pensions spread across 100 private and charitable employers in the North West and had invested £2million.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission faces a huge investigation for failing to detect the fraud earlier.

It has emerged that Madoff came under suspicion from U.S. market regulators 16 years ago after he was linked to illegal investments valued at more than £300million. He was allowed to carry on virtually unchecked.

Reckless City bosses should be investigated for wrongdoing and if necessary jailed as part of a sweeping crackdown on fraud in the financial markets, David Cameron has demanded.

The Tory leader lambasted Gordon Brown for a ‘failure of moral leadership’, suggesting the Government had ignored widespread abuses.

In what was seen as an attempt to counter claims that he is too reliant on wealthy donors linked to the credit crunch, Mr Cameron insisted: ‘There cannot be one law for the rich and another for everyone else.