MARK MADOFF, the elder son of convicted swindler Bernard Madoff, took his own life on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.

Mr Madoff (46) was found on Saturday morning in the living room of his Manhattan apartment, while his two-year-old son slept in an adjoining bedroom, said Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York City Police Department.

Mr Madoff and his brother, Andrew, were under investigation but had not faced any criminal charges in the Ponzi scheme that led to their father’s jailing.

The sons, along with Bernard Madoff’s brother and five directors of the UK arm of Bernard Madoff’s investment firm, were sued on December 8th by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee recovering assets for Madoff’s victims.

“This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy,” Martin Flumenbaum of law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton Garrison said in a statement.

“Mark was an innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of unrelenting pressure from false accusations and innuendo.”

Mr Madoff had become increasingly distressed in the past week as the second anniversary of his father’s arrest approached and Mr Picard sued his children, according to a source who knew Madoff and the family.

Adding to the pressure on Mr Madoff was the arrest in November of Annette Bongiorno, a long-time aide to his father, and reports in the Wall Street Journal last week that she was being urged to co-operate in the investigation targeting the Madoff brothers, the source said.

Mr Madoff was also troubled by the knowledge that the newspaper was preparing an article for publication to mark two years since his father’s jailing, according to the source.

The Madoff case came to light in December 2008 after Bernard Madoff confessed to his two sons, who also worked for him in the business, that he had used money from new investors to pay earlier investors.

The trustee, Mr Picard, had accused Mark and his brother Andrew of being involved in their father’s scheme because the separate business units they ran were actually part of one enterprise.

“Firm manuals provided that in Bernard Madoff’s absence, Mark and/or Andrew Madoff were responsible for carrying out the firm’s policies,” Mr Picard said in court papers filed in May.

The brothers both denied being involved in their father’s business in court papers seeking to dismiss the lawsuit.

The death “is a tragic development and my sympathy goes out to Mark Madoff’s family”, Mr Picard said in a statement.

– (Bloomberg)