After poring over analysis from "high-priced arm chair oracles," a Manhattan federal judge on Feb. 25 certified a class of Fairfield Greenwich Group investors whose money disappeared in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
But Southern District Judge Victor Marrero excluded investors in 25 countries, singling out a swath of the globe ranging from France, Switzerland, Israel and China to the tiny island nations of Picairn and Tokelau. The judge concluded that those countries’ laws don’t support class treatment for the investors’ claims, unlike some 40 other countries whose investors may now proceed as a class.
