Bermuda-based fund manager Kingate Management may have "played a crucial role" in the Bernard Madoff debacle, a London judge said yesterday.

The Kingate Global and Kingate euro hedge funds — now in liquidation in the British Virgin Islands — were among the largest "feeder funds" to Madoff, having invested more than $1.7 billion in the fraudster's business.

Justice David Kitchin made his remarks in the High Court of Justice in London yesterday, as he ordered London-based FIM Advisers to hand over documents requested through the court by the liquidator of Madoff's investment company.

Justice Kitchin said FIM's principals Carlo Grosso and Federico Ceretti were introduced to Madoff in 2004 by Sandra Manzke, then chief executive officer of Tremont Advisers Inc. The judge added that the pair, both Italian citizens living in London, set up Kingate in Bermuda that year to invest with Madoff.

By 2006, they had paid more than $100 million to Madoff, the judge added.

Madoff pleaded guilty in March 2009 to using money from new investors to pay off old ones in a the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, which caused tens of billions of dollars in losses for investors around the world. Irving Picard is the court-appointed trustee in the bankruptcy of Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC and is trying to retrieve whatever funds he can for creditors.

Mr. Picard has filed lawsuits against some Madoff investors, seeking the return of fake profits from the Ponzi scheme.

FIM had sought to limit the documents of the funds provided to Mr. Picard to those dating from August 2005 through December 2008, when Madoff's fraud was discovered.

"I am unable to accept those submissions," Kitchin said. Documents from before and after that time period may be "highly relevant to his investigations."

FIM, which has an office adjacent to those of Kingate, on Front Street, is run by Carlo Grosso and Federico Ceretti.

In his ruling, Justice Kitchin said Mr. Picard was seeking information on whether FIM knew about the Ponzi scheme.

Mr. Grosso and Mr. Ceretti "had regular calls every year with Madoff," Justice Kitchin said, according to a Bloomberg News report.

"The degree of personal contact, in the trustee's opinion, was highly unusual as Mr. Madoff tended to limit his contact with investors as much as possible."

Kingate "reaped tens of millions of US dollars in fees," the judge added. "It all suggests Kingate played a crucial role and ensured a flow of funds" to the fraud.

Kingate did not respond by press time to a message left at its office yesterday.

The judge's comments shine the spotlight on the part played by Bermuda entities in the Madoff affair. Fairfield Greenwich Bermuda Ltd. was an investment manager of Fairfield's Sentry funds, which invested more than 95 percent of their $7.2 billion in assets with Madoff, according to a complaint filed in April last year by the state of Massachusetts.

In September last year, the company agreed an $8 million settlement with the state, which included no admission of wrongdoing.

Kingate and Tremont (Bermuda) Ltd., which is owned by Tremont Advisers, were last year among the parties sued for $3.5 billion by a group of funds in a case brought to a US court last June.

The UK Serious Fraud Office, which prosecutes complex and cross-border financial crime, is probing whether Mr. Grosso and Mr. Ceretti knew of the Madoff fraud, one media source has reported.