Thursday, March 3, 2011

All because of Bernard Madoff ...

The club's New York Mets baseball is on the verge of bankruptcy! It is not to understand America and the symbolic significance that this sport vehicle not to be moved from the danger which threatens the country in New York. Patrons of the Mets, the other big club in the city after the Yankees, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz saw their star tarnished over the days.

And all because of Bernard Madoff. Him again? Yes. That the scammer has plucked his own friends, hobbies, he plunges various charities dealing with children who are blind or disabled was already much less honorable, but Madoff can keep the Mets in the straw, that which is inconceivable, as in this case, it would have attempted to "values" U.S.

(it is a bit of gloating, of course). What is it? For a year, owners of the Mets, the financial magnates Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, officers multimillionaire investment funds Sterling Equities, which owns the bulk of the capital club were spreading in denials: no, not the Mets are not in financial difficulty.

Yet now, at the beginning of Irving Picard, the liquidator of the fund fictional allowed to erode Madoff thousands of investors, announced that the two leaders went on a personal basis and their sports background Sterling Equities for complicity with the crook. And claim their $ 1 billion for repayment to creditors which it stands: investors really injured.

You have already spoken of the Picard method. For the liquidator, those which Madoff has long benefitted from outlandish returns could only be aware of the fraud, active or passive accomplices. Having reached in December, to recover $ 7.2 billion of the widow of the financier Jeffrey Picower, he does it again by trying to bring the owners of the Mets to repentance.

MM. Wilpon and Katz sticking to a soothing rhetoric: "How would we know what the SEC (Constable of U.S. markets) and other government auditors found no"? This line of defense does not disturb the very opinionated Mr. Irving. For it was soon revealed that the Mets are in bad financial shape, and he suspects the owners to have confused the club management and their business with Bernie.

The club, in the absence of sporting success (he has not won the championship since 1986), is one of the richest in baseball. Valued at 900 million annual payroll for the players alone reached 140 million. Knowing that a baseball team has 40 regular players and a couple of reservists, the average salary is 2.55 million per player.

The highest contracts exceed $ 50 million over 5-8 years. Recently, MM. Wilpon and Katz received a loan of $ 25 million of their friend Bud Selig, owner of the league pro baseball. The case turned vinegar why the loan kept secret, except to hide the fact that no bank no longer wanted to give credit to the club? One sees again the relationship with Madoff.

First, U.S. banks have never liked the crook. And they have little appreciated his statements at the New York Times in mid-January, that his own bank of its heyday, JPMorgan Chase, was his "accomplice in one way or another." Since the names Wilpon and Katz are associated with that of the scammer, they became associate.

If they dive under the blows of the liquidator of the fund Madoff, these banks, some donors are also the Mets, for fear of being their own expense. Hence their strategy: press the two men to sell the club to an investor with more assurance than they. Then, Madoff begins to swing. Man multiplies in interviews from the bottom of his cell.

In one published by the New York Mag February 27, he said "misunderstood: I am not that described (...). I'm a good person." Above all, he keeps repeating compulsively that all those to whom he brought so much money could not not know. Yet that is precisely what claims the liquidator of his money! Wilpon and Katz, who swore he had never suspected, like moderately, although in Forbes magazine (February 16), the swindler, lord, that those responsible "knew nothing".

In the championship, the Mets team is rudderless. Marmoset Madoff!, Say supporters. Slobs and owners, friends of the crook who broke down the club! Sports columnist of The New York Times, George Vecsey writes: "Every time I drive near Flushing (instead of the Mets' stadium), I guess the name of Madoff glowing mischievously in the sky and I wonder how it all will end." On 23 February, a judge of the bankruptcy court appointed a mediator to seek a compromise between Irving Picard and the owners of the Mets.

The mediator is named Mario Cuomo. Governor of the State of New York from 1983 to 1994, there is a revered figure. His son, former Attorney General of the State, has also been elected governor Nov. 4. Should the future of the Mets and the political, financial and symbolic that they are either seen as cardinal to a character as influential as Mario Cuomo was appointed as mediator in this case.

Cypel @ bbc. en Sylvain Cypel Article published in the edition of 02.03.11

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