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To: LLCF who wrote (228731)	12/23/2009 4:00:18 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

Fairfield Greenwich Asks to Dismiss Suits Over Madoff (Update2) By Linda Sandler Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- A unit of Fairfield Greenwich Group, the hedge fund firm co-founded by Walter Noel that earned an estimated $919 million in fees from investments with Bernard Madoff, asked a judge to dismiss lawsuits that accuse it of not doing due diligence and seeking to recover losses, a court filing shows. Fairfield Greenwich Ltd. and the hedge-fund group’s partners, including top principals Noel, Jeffrey Tucker and Andres Piedrahita, joined other defendants that filed motions to dismiss a class-action suit yesterday in federal court in Manhattan, or entered statements in support of dismissal. They also included accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Fairfield’s Lion Fairfield Capital Management Ltd. and Citgo Group Ltd. The suit against them “seeks to hold the FG defendants responsible for losses caused by a fraud they neither participated in nor had knowledge of,” the defendants said in a filing today. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based hedge fund group claimed $16 billion of assets under management, $7.3 billion of which was purportedly invested with now-jailed Ponzi-scheme operator Madoff through its Fairfield Sentry Ltd. unit, according to a lawsuit filed May 29 by Fairfield Sentry. ‘Gross Negligence’ The Fairfield Sentry fund seeks to recover more than $919 million in investment-management and performance fees that it paid to Fairfield Greenwich over seven years, alleging that the Fairfield managers and partners “recklessly disregarded their duties as the fund’s risk and investment adviser and their actions and inactions constitute gross negligence.” Several cases against Fairfield and its accounting firm were merged into a consolidated complaint filed Sept. 29 in U.S. District Court in New York. Fairfield Greenwich defendants don’t include Fairfield Greenwich Group which is a marketing name, not a legal entity, the defendants said in today’s filing. Fairfield Greenwich and its partners learned at the same time as everybody else a year ago that the now-jailed Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, the defendants said in today’s filing. They were among Madoff’s victims, and lost “tens of millions of dollars of their own and family members’ money,” they said. PricewaterhouseCoopers, an auditor for Fairfield Greenwich Funds, said it was falsely accused of failing to uphold accounting standards. Dozens of auditing firms, hundreds of money managers and every U.S. regulatory and law-enforcement agency failed to discover that Madoff was operating fraudulently, it said. The case is Anwar v. Fairfield Greenwich Ltd., 09-cv-118, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). To contact the reporter on this story: Linda Sandler in New York at lsandler@bloomberg.net. Last Updated: December 23, 2009 13:41 EST