Two days ago, on Tuesday, February 17, 2009, the first meeting of what is being called the "Madoff Case Global Alliance of Law Firms" took place in Madrid, Spain. It was attended by approximately 40 lawyers from over 20 different countries, as well as at least one non-lawyer from the U.S. named Charles Grice. Grice is the Managing Director of a 32-person consulting firm in New York called CRI Compliance, and was invited by Javier Cremades, the Spanish lawyer leading the group, to attend this extraordinary meeting at Cremades' law office in Madrid.

I spoke with Grice shortly after his return to the U.S. from Madrid yesterday about the details of the meeting, and his take on the Global Alliance, its goals, and its prospects for success. He told me the following:

The Global Alliance is being organized and led by Javier Cremades (pictured) of the Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo law firm in Spain. The group has a President (Cremades); an Executive Secretariat (Henning Wegener, the Chairman of the Cremades firm and former Ambassador of Germany in Spain); and a Vice President (Gaytri Kachroo, a partner in the U.S. law firm McCarter & English who also represents Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos).

On relatively short notice, Cremades invited the group to meet at his office in Madrid, which Grice described as being in a pretty, "Georgetown-like" section of the city. The 40 or so attendees packed into a single conference room in the Cremades' office on Tuesday, and met for several hours. The meeting of lawyers from around the globe was conducted in "awkward English." Lawyers were in attendance from the United States, UK, France, Mexico, Uruguay, Switzerland, Italy, France, Argentina, Chile, Panama, Israel, German, Lithuania, Colombia, Brazil, Austria, Ecuador, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, The Netherlands and Spain.

The primary goal of the Global Alliance is to bring lawyers involved in the case together to share information and attempt to develop facts, strategies and theories. Grice said that although it has now been more than two months since Madoff's arrest, it is still clear that nobody knows what happened in the Madoff fraud yet. Grice noted that he has now seen documents received by victims going back to the late 1980s, and it is "beautiful paperwork" with no obvious errors that would arouse suspicion.

Among the more specific goals of the Global Alliance is to create a "cyber-workroom" similar to those used on complex M&A deals that Global Alliance members can access remotely. The group is also expected to unveil a website in the near future that will be available to the public.

Grice said that the ongoing settlement efforts of Banco Santander were of keen interest at the meeting. A settlement in that case may be close, and Grice said that everyone is watching the outcome of those negotiations intently.

Grice observed that although it has a worthy objective, the Global Alliance will face many challenges. Most notably, the participants in the Global Alliance currently include lawyers and representatives of banks and feeder funds that may well have conflicting interests with victims of the Madoff fraud. Although many banks and feeder funds were themselves victims of the alleged fraud, they are also in an adversarial position with victims as they are key defendants in many of the cases brought to date for their own roles in the huge investment losses. Second, the Global Alliance includes a contingent from the U.S., which Grice considers to be more contentious and not interested in any true alliance with potential adversaries such as feeder funds. Grice noted that some of the U.S. law firms expected to participate did not attend. Third, with so many lawyers and legal systems involved, Grice noted that it was often difficult for the group to reach consensus on issues. He observed that at one point, the meeting stalled when a lengthy argument broke out due to multiple strong opinions on how Luxembourg law would treat banks that created wholly-owned feeder funds.

Grice said that there was an additional "elephant in the room" that loomed during the meeting - many of the lawyers represented unnamed victims who wished to remain so, perhaps due to tax or money laundering issues.

After the business of the meeting was completed, Cremades invited everyone in the group to participate in a ceremony where they wore traditional Spanish Court Dress - togas. Many members of this group of senior lawyers from around the world took him up on the offer. Finally, at the end of the day there was a press conference conducted in Spanish. Approximately 40-50 members of the press joined the lawyers in the crowded Cremades conference room for the press conference.

A list of the law firms and lawyers participating in the "Madoff Case Global Alliance of Law Firms" is available here.

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