April 9 (Bloomberg) -- The trustee appointed to liquidate Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC is seeking $150 million transferred from the firm to Banque Jacob Safra (Gibraltar) Ltd., the first such action aimed at recovering assets withdrawn by a Madoff client.

Irving Picard, appointed under the Securities Investor Protection Act, filed the lawsuit today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The October transfer was for the benefit of British Virgin Islands-based Vizcaya Partners Ltd., also named as a defendant.

“The Trustee seeks to set aside such transfer and preserve the property for the benefit of BLMIS’s defrauded customers,” according to the complaint filed by Picard’s lawyers at Baker & Hostetler LLP.

The Vizcaya account was opened on Dec. 21, 2001, by its custodian, Banque Safra-France SA, and Vizcaya invested $327.2 million with Madoff through 26 wire transfers to an account at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York beginning in January 2002, according to the complaint.

Banque Jacob Safra (Gibraltar) is based in London and operates in Gibraltar. Picard has said he is seeking assets in Gibraltar and recently sought permission to hire lawyers to represent him there.

Banque Safra-France is a unit of Banque Safra-Luxembourg SA, a closely held bank based in Luxembourg. A message left at Banque Safra’s Geneva office wasn’t immediately answered. Efforts to contact Vizcaya were unsuccessful.

Picard’s Mission

Picard is responsible for conducting a broad investigation of Madoff’s assets and actions. He intends to “pursue recovery from customers who received preferences and/or payouts of fictitious profits to the detriment of other defrauded customers whose money was consumed by the Ponzi scheme,” he said in court papers. Picard has said he already recovered about $1 billion to repay Madoff clients.

“I would expect there to be a substantial number of these sorts of preference lawsuits,” said Edward A. Smith, a lawyer with Venable LLP in New York who specializes in bankruptcy and commercial litigation. “Litigation concerning preferences will go on for some time.”

Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty March 12 to defrauding investors by using money from new ones to pay off old ones in a $65 billion Ponzi scheme. He faces as many as 150 years in prison at his sentencing in June. He is in custody.

Federal prosecutors have identified more than $100 million in real estate, cash, bonds, art, autos, boats and other assets owned by Madoff and his wife, Ruth, which they said in March they intend to seize. The couple’s Palm Beach, Florida, residence, a yacht called Bull and a smaller boat have been seized by the U.S. Marshals Service.

The bankruptcy case is Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, 08-01789, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: Christopher Scinta in New York at cscinta@bloomberg.net; David Glovin in U.S. District Court in Manhattan at dglovin@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 9, 2009 17:46 EDT