Luxembourg and BCCI: a WSJ feature story about Adil Elias

Pursuing a Scandal's Long Shadow

(WSJ, January 10, 2012. By Brad Reagan).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513604577143351177214864.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

Adil Elias, a victim of fraud, and maybe official carelessness, tries to get even. The dragon however has many heads to cut off.

My favorites in this story are actually recurring subjects. Madoff victims and others, here are the essentials and the timelines:

• More than twenty years went by, and the case is still not yet resolved.
• Deloitte, the liquidator, who was envisioning that creditors might get 10 cents on the dollar, now boasts 86 cents, I guess in 2012 dollars. They made $600 million in fees.
• Liquidators want to get over it, if there isn't much money to be made. That's the case generally in Luxembourg bankruptcies. In the opposite case, it is of course obvious that things will last a couple of million of billable hours.
• Mr. Elias' persistence increased Abu Dhabi's settlement figure by more than $ 1 billion!? He deserves a monument and all his money back.