French businessman who invested with Madoff commits suicide

New York: A New York-based money manager who may have lost $1.4 billion of client funds invested with Bernard Madoff apparently killed himself in his Madison Avenue office, officials said.

The body of Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, 65, a co-founder and chief executive officer of Access International Advisors, was found on Tuesday. The company raised money mainly from wealthy European investors. Madoff was arrested on December 11 for allegedly running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

Both his wrists were slit with box cutters, and he appeared to have bled to death, police said.

“Our investigative premise is that it was a suicide,'' Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in an interview.

De La Villehuchet was found “with his feet propped up on his desk, a trash pail nearby to collect blood,'' and no sign of a second person, Kelly said in the interview.
The money manager had “multiple stab wounds'' to his arms and wrists, and a box-cutter and pills were found nearby, Kelly said at a news conference. No suicide note was found.

Villehuchet had been trying to recover some of the funds lost to Madoff, Paris newspaper La Tribune reported on its website, citing a person close to Villehuchet. That source also told the newspaper Villehuchet killed himself.

"For the past week, he had been searching day and night for a way to recover the funds of his investors, through actions in the US against some American parties. He couldn't bear the blame game that broke out among Europeans," a person described as close to Villehuchet told La Tribune.

"It's a farewell from someone who had nothing to be ashamed of. He had tried to obtain good returns for others, with all the diligence necessary in his job. The truth is that everybody wanted to invest with Madoff, who was considered by all as AAA or totally safe," La Tribune quoted him as saying.