Paul Konigsberg, Bernie Madoff’s longtime accountant and close friend, was arrested in New York on charges that he helped carry out the financier’s massive Ponzi scheme by falsifying account statements and trading records.

Konigsberg is the 15th person to be charged over the fraud revealed nearly five years ago. The trustee liquidating the firm has estimated that investors lost about US$17.3 billion of principal.

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At the time of its collapse in 2008, Madoff Securities boasted it had about US$65 billion in client assets, whereas in fact it had only about US$300 million.

The charges against Konigsberg come as the government faces a December deadline to bring additional charges connected with the Madoff fraud.

"Paul Konigsberg threw aside his ethical duties as an accountant in favour of his role as a false bookkeeper, which included allegedly participating in a scheme of backdating client account statements to show fictitious trades and conjuring profits and losses of millions of dollars," US Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said in a statement.

Reed Brodsky, a lawyer for Konigsberg, said his client was also a victim of Madoff’s fraud, with Konigsberg’s family having lost US$10 million.

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"For a number of months, we’ve tried to demonstrate to the federal authorities that Mr. Konigsberg has committed no crime," Brodsky said outside the courthouse after the hearing. "He is a victim of a sociopath – Bernie Madoff."

Madoff was convicted of crafting a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme in which many victims lost all of their savings. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009.