Helmut Kiener: Germany's mini-Madoff

Convicted hedge-fund manager Helmut Kiener has been described as Germany's mini-Madoff. Kiener duped the giants of the banking system out of millions. But were the banks - blinded by greed - partly at fault?

Amongst financial fraudsters, Bernie Madoff has achieved pretty much legendary status. Any comparison with the $65bn swindler has become a sort of perverse compliment. That's the accolade' now being foisted on a newly jailed replica of the ex-Wall Street Ponzi super-schemer (we explain Ponzi schemes below).

This latest "mini-Madoff" is to be found in Germany. Helmut Kiener, the founder of the K1 hedge fund and a psychologist by training has just been sentenced on 86 counts of falsification of documents and ten of fraud and tax evasion "after one of Germany's most spectacular cases of financial crime to be revealed by the global economic crisis", says James Wilson in the Financial Times.

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