Mark Madoff's suicide occurred amid a stepped-up offensive by trustee Irving Picard, who has been tasked with recovering funds for victims. CNBC adds some new wrinkles, reporting that Mark Madoff might have been implicated in Picard's effort to force Austrian banker Sonja Kohn to pay for Bernard Madoff's crimes.

In Picard's view, Kohn is one of the lynchpins of the criminal enterprise. "While Mark Madoff is not a defendant in the Kohn suit, Picard targets him as the link between Kohn and the scam. The suit points to a fax sent by a Kohn employee to Mark Madoff on Jan. 6, 2000," reports CNBC.

Irving filed a nearly $20 billion suit against Kohn just before a suit-filing deadline passed over the weekend, the two-year anniversary of the end of the scam. Picard claims that Kohn, principal shareholder and the head of Bank Medici AG, had a long criminal relationship with Madoff that resulted in billions flowing from her clients to his scheme. She has denied any wrong-doing. Madoff also denied involvement in the scheme.

This lawsuit followed another Picard suit against accounts in the name of Madoff's children; the suit sought $274,000. We may never know what the exact role of Mark was in the scheme, if there was any role at all.

A coda: as it turns out, Bernard Madoff may not be allowed to attend his son's funeral. That may be appropriate, given the circumstances.

For more:
- here's the CNBC article

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