Dealing a major blow to the trustee’s efforts to recover fraudulent transfers on behalf of the bankruptcy estate of the company run by Bernard Madoff, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York held in SIPC v. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC¹ that the Bankruptcy Code cannot be used to recover fraudulent transfers of funds that occur entirely outside the United States.

On December 5, 2013, Judge Steven Rhodes of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan held that the city of Detroit had satisfied the five expressly delineated eligibility requirements for filing under Chapter 9 of the US Bankruptcy Code¹ and so could proceed with its bankruptcy case.