July 04, 2009

British authorities have started an investigation into millions of dollars of payments from the operations of the convicted money manager Bernard L. Madoff to companies linked to the Austrian banker Sonja Kohn, an Austrian official confirmed on Friday.The Serious Fraud Office had asked Austrian prosecutors in May for help in investigating payments made by Mr. Madoff’s London office for research reports by Bank Medici in Austria, which was majority-owned by Mrs. Kohn, who also served as its chairwoman.

“We’re closely cooperating with the S.F.O. and the U.S. Justice Department in that case,” the official, Gerhard Jarosch, a senior public prosecutor in Austria, said Friday. A separate investigation by the Austrian prosecutor into whether Mrs. Kohn and Bank Medici were involved with Mr. Madoff is continuing, he said Prosecutors are looking into whether Mr. Madoff paid more than $40 million to Mrs. Kohn in exchange for turning three Bank Medici funds into feeder funds for his business.