Madoff Securities International appears to have been at the center of the swindler's money laundering activities, according to criminal charges filed on Tuesday (Britain's Serious Fraud Office has been investigating). The London firm was owned mainly by Madoff, with smaller amounts owned by his brother, Peter, and several other family members. Scot Paltrow at Conde Nast Portfolio has been reporting on this angle:

Madoff sent money investors deposited in his fund to London, then had it transferred back to different U.S. accounts, for his personal use and to help pay the overhead of the legitimate stock trading business that was part of his main operation in New York. On one April day in 2007, for instance, Madoff caused nearly $55 million "derived from fraud in the sale of securities, mail fraud, wire fraud, and theft from an employee benefit plan" to be transferred from New York to London. As an integral part of the alleged Ponzi scheme, some of the money sent to London was sent back to the U.S. and used to pay off earlier customers who wanted to cash out their investment accounts.

For some weeks, London has been identified as an important outpost for Madoff. Julia Fenwick was his office manager there for nearly eight years and talked to the Daily Mail in early January about the up close and personal stuff:

“Bernie is the most anally retentive person I have ever met. Everything was always so controlled. The London office had to resemble as closely as possible the New York office – grey walls, grey carpets, black trim, black cupboards. Everything was grey and black. On the occasions he visited London, we'd spend days before his arrival leveling the blinds, making sure the computer screens were an identical height, lining every picture up straight. No paper was allowed on the desks. We'd use black marker pens to touch up the skirting boards and the doors. Anything that looked as if it had a mark or scratch on it, we'd have to retouch. Things like that would drive him nuts.” His employees boasted that the character of Gordon Gekko, the ruthless schemer played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 film Wall Street, was based on Madoff, but to Julia Fenwick for a long time he was “lovely Uncle Bernie."

Meantime, veteran journo-sleuth Gary Weiss strongly questions what he calls the "Single Bullethead Theory" - that is, who else might be involved.

Now, don't get me wrong--I happen to believe in the JFK single bullet theory. But the idea that a single bullethead named Madoff could perpetrate this crime--now, that I don't believe. White collar crime-fighter Sam Antar of Crazy Eddie fame, appearing on Fox Business News today, says that Bernie is now protecting the other conspirators who must surely exist--the people who knew about it and the people who turned a blind eye. So who are they and why have they not been indicted? Or are prosecutors going to push a "single bullethead theory" of the Madoff crimes? That's implied by the criminal charges talking about the clerical employees of the firm being ignorant and inexperienced. Baloney.