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Locked inside his office on the 22nd floor of a New York building, René-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet sliced his arms open and bled into a trash can to avoid making a mess for the cleaning lady.
[utube]k31dKoFsniU[/utube]
“He chose the methodology of death that he did, a painful solution to atone for his sins of omission,” says Frank Casey, a financial investor who worked with Villehuchet. “What a waste of a man.”
The French investment fund manager had lost $1.5bn of his clients’ money to Bernie Madoff, the architect of the biggest Ponzi scheme in American history, who had surrendered to police 11 days earlier.
The story of Madoff’s rise and fall, and how his illusory gift for defying the gravity of financial markets shattered countless lives, is told in a four-part documentary released on Netflix on 4 January.
Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street features whistleblowers, employees, investigators and victims as well as previously unseen video depositions of Madoff himself. One interviewee describes him as “a financial sociopath, a serial financial killer”. Another says he was a man of “pure evil” whose tale will still be told a hundred years from now.
But the film also makes the argument that it is facile to suppose that the epic $64bn securities swindle, which wiped out life savings and ruined charities, was the brainchild of a single villain. It would not have been possible without partners in crime and financial institutions willing to turn a blind eye.
Speaking via Zoom from his home in New York’s Hudson Valley, the documentary’s director Joe Berlinger says: “Over time the aura of this story, and how the story was originally reported, and how most people think about the story, is one evil genius who was so charming and manipulative he did all this terrible stuff.
“The reality, which is underreported and a cautionary tale for everybody who has any kind of financial assets in the market, is he got away with it because of a whole cadre of literal co-conspirators or people who should have known better.”
[utube]k31dKoFsniU[/utube]
“He chose the methodology of death that he did, a painful solution to atone for his sins of omission,” says Frank Casey, a financial investor who worked with Villehuchet. “What a waste of a man.”
The French investment fund manager had lost $1.5bn of his clients’ money to Bernie Madoff, the architect of the biggest Ponzi scheme in American history, who had surrendered to police 11 days earlier.
The story of Madoff’s rise and fall, and how his illusory gift for defying the gravity of financial markets shattered countless lives, is told in a four-part documentary released on Netflix on 4 January.
Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street features whistleblowers, employees, investigators and victims as well as previously unseen video depositions of Madoff himself. One interviewee describes him as “a financial sociopath, a serial financial killer”. Another says he was a man of “pure evil” whose tale will still be told a hundred years from now.
But the film also makes the argument that it is facile to suppose that the epic $64bn securities swindle, which wiped out life savings and ruined charities, was the brainchild of a single villain. It would not have been possible without partners in crime and financial institutions willing to turn a blind eye.
Speaking via Zoom from his home in New York’s Hudson Valley, the documentary’s director Joe Berlinger says: “Over time the aura of this story, and how the story was originally reported, and how most people think about the story, is one evil genius who was so charming and manipulative he did all this terrible stuff.
“The reality, which is underreported and a cautionary tale for everybody who has any kind of financial assets in the market, is he got away with it because of a whole cadre of literal co-conspirators or people who should have known better.”
