New York - Bernard Madoff, the high-flying Wall Street investor charged with a 50-million-dollar fraud, was placed under house arrest on Wednesday. Madoff, 70, will be required to wear a tracking device and be subject to a curfew, while his wife told the judge she would give up two of her homes if he were to attempt to escape, Bloomberg news reported.
Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq exchange, was arrested last week for running a 50-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
His firm, Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC, operated as an international market broker with a separate investment advisory business for private clients. The advisory business was kept secretive by Madoff and served between 11 and 25 clients with 17.1 billion dollars under his management.
The top official in charge of watching over US stock markets, Christopher Cox, admitted late Tuesday that his agency had failed to act for nearly a decade on suspicions concerning the dealings.
In a statement Cox, who is chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said the agency had received allegations going back to 1999 about Madoff.
Cox said there had been "credible and specific allegations" of wrongdoing by Madoff and that the allegations had been "repeatedly brought to the attention of SEC staff, but were never recommended to the commission for action."
