Scheme ... up to 30 per cent of Bernard Madoff victims don't know they've lost money yet / File.
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- Lawsuit launched against Madoff
- Could be 3 million victims
- Many still unaware of lost money
THE alleged Ponzi scheme by Bernard Madoff has claimed up to 3 million victims worldwide says a Spanish law firm that has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the victims.
The total amount of money involved in Madoff's pyramid scheme could turn out to be much higher then the $US50 billion ($77 billion) reported so far, the president of law firm Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, Javier Cremades said.
"Our calculations are that at least 3 million people were affected by the Madoff affair, 3 million people who could be directly or indirectly affected by the case,'' he said.
The estimate comes from information collected by more than 30 law firms around the world that are representing the 2900 people or institutions in 25 nations which have so far taken legal action over the scheme.
Mr Madoff, a 70-year-old former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market, was arrested in December and charged with using billions of dollars from new investors to pay off older ones in a so-called Ponzi or pyramid scheme.
About 30 percent of those who have been touched by the affair still do not know it because their exposure is through pension funds or other indirect financial products like hedge funds, Mr Cremades said.
Last week the law firm filed a class action lawsuit in Florida in the name of people who invested in Madoff through a fund run by Santander, Spain's largest bank.
Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Santander offered to reimburse the €1.38 billion ($2.8 billion)which its private banking clients lost by investing in its Optimal fund.
Santander, the largest bank in the eurozone, has said it had a total of €2.33 billion in client funds exposed to Madoff.
Mr Cremades estimated that the legal battle over the Madoff affair will involve 300 law firms and over 45,000 lawyers and some 15,000 formal legal complaints.
He told AFP he would like to organize a "global response'' to the scandal that is coordinated by several law firms around the world because ``people want to recover their money''.
