The Daily Docket: Former Madoff Operations Director Sentenced

The leader of Bernard Madoff’s broker-dealer business was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday for aiding one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history with “his meticulous bookkeeping and averted eye,” reports WSJ.

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Former customers of Peregrine Financial Group Inc., the Iowa brokerage firm that collapsed after the exposure of its founder’s fraud, are in line to recover more of the $394 million they are owed, reports DBR’s Jacqueline Palank in WSJ.

Banco Espírito Santo SA’s former chief executive Ricardo Salgado has defended his management of Portugal’s second-largest lender, blaming the central bank, the government and the media for unleashing a chain of events that led to the bank’s collapse in his first appearance since the bank failed in August, reports WSJ.

The Detroit Institute of Arts dodged the forced sale of its art during the city’s historic bankruptcy, but now it has to raise as much as $350 million to fulfill its end of the bargain, Bloomberg reports.

FBI investigators accused former Freedom Industries President Gary Southern of lying in testimony he gave at bankruptcy hearings for the company, which contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 West Virginians, the Charleston Daily Mail reports. If convicted, he could face up to 30 years in prison.

Law professor Stephen Lubben said restructuring leaders who are pushing Congress to fix the Chapter 11 process dodged a major question in their report released on Monday: whether real companies in bankruptcy should have the same rights that financial institutions have under the Dodd-Frank Act, according to his DealBook column published by The New York Times.