Claims Approval Process Moves Forward Slowly In Madoff Liquidation

The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (“SIPC”) and Irving H. Picard, the court-appointed trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (“BLMIS”) have announced that 8,000 customer claims have been filed and that $231 million in SIPC funds have been committed to 543 claims that have been allowed to date. Those 543 claims are in the total amount of $2.972 billion; $2.741 billion of that amount exceeds the statutory limit of SIPA protection.

 
The press announcement, available at http://www.sipc.org/media/release01July09.cfm, calls this “major progress” since May 14, when SIPC and Picard announced that $61.4 million in SIPC funds had been committed to 125 BLMIS claimants.
 
Yet many independent observers – not to mention thousands of other claimants – rightly believe that there still is a long, long way to go.