Last week, we reported that Marc Dreier's lawyer, Gerald Shargel, filed papers asking for the opportunity to contest the Securities and Exchange Commission's order to freeze Dreier's assets. Dreier wants access to those assets, Shargel said, so that he can pay his legal fees.
We checked in with Shargel on Wednesday, and he told us he has reached an agreement in principle with the SEC's attorneys to release $50,000 that Dreier can use to pay his legal bills. Jack Kaufman, an SEC lawyer in the agency's civil suit against the former managing partner of Dreier LLP, says he can't comment until the agreement is made part of the public court file.
Shargel says he still plans to contest a judge's decision to hold Dreier without bail. He's been in jail since his arrest last month on charges of scamming hedge fund clients out of up to $380 million by creating bogus promissory notes, posing as another lawyer and having an alleged accomplice, Kosta Kovachev, pose as an executive from the real estate company that Dreier (falsely) claimed was offering the notes.
We asked Shargel if he planned to incorporate a judge's decision to allow Bernard Madoff to remain under house arrest into his bail argument.
Shargel says he's not mentioning Madoff in his written application for bail. But he will bring Madoff up during oral argument if it seems appropriate. "I think the comparison is useful," he says. A date for the bail hearing has not been set yet, Shargel says.
One last bit of Dreier news: The financial services wing of DaimlerChrysler filed papers Monday in Dreier LLP's bankruptcy case asking the court to release the 2006 Mercedes-Benz R500 that Dreier leased three years ago. Dreier owes nearly $4,700 on the car and didn't make any of his $938.75 monthly payments in November or December.
Our favorite line in the Mercedes motion: "The vehicle, by its intrinsic nature, is mobile, thereby subject to the foreseeable possibility of injury thereto by way of accident or collision." Indeed.
Deily, Mooney & Glastetter in Albany is representing DaimlerChrysler.
This article first appeared on The Am Law Daily blog on AmericanLawyer.com.
