A British judge has cleared Bernard Madoff's sons of wrongdoing in a case brought against them by the liquidator of his estate in Britain, saying in a written ruling that the pair's honesty was not in doubt.
Judge Andrew Popplewell said yesterday that the brothers, Mark and Andrew, were among several UK directors of Bernard Madoff's London-based securities firm whose reputations had been tainted by association with the elder Madoff's multibillion-dollar fraud.
In dismissing the civil case against them all, the judge delivered a glowing endorsement of their character.
"Their honesty and integrity has been vindicated," he said.
Mark and Andrew Madoff long played a lead role in the drama surrounding their disgraced financier father. They first alerted authorities in 2008 after the elder Madoff confessed that his highly regarded investment business was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme.
The pair held their silence as the details of the breathtaking fraud spilled out into the public domain, but following Mark's suicide in 2010 and ahead of the release of a book telling the Madoff family's side of the story Andrew spoke to the press, saying the Madoff family had been completely hoodwinked by his father.
"What he did to me, to my brother, and to my family is unforgivable," Andrew Madoff said at the time.
