The founder of an investment fund that lost as much as US$1.4 billion in the alleged Bernard Madoff scheme committed suicide Tuesday at his Manhattan office in New York, the New York-based Daily News reported Wednesday.

Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet -- grief-stricken after becoming one of the top 10 losers in the reportedly US$50 billion Ponzi scheme -- slashed both wrists with a box cutter and bled to death, cops were cited as saying.

Tidy, precise and punctilious to the end, the CEO of Access International Advisors locked the door of his 22nd floor office at509 Madison Ave., sat in his swivel chair -- and bled into a garbage pail to minimize the mess, the report said.

It was the first known suicide connected to Madoff's scam.

The lonely death of the tormented 65-year-old money manager who invested the fortunes of the Rothschilds, Bettencourts and other high-born European grandees sent shock waves around the globe, said the report.

Little was known about de la Villehuchet's business practices, but Bill Rapavy, a former partner at Access, summed him up in two words: "He's irreproachable."

(Xinhua News Agency December 25, 2008)