Irving H. Picard, the court-appointed trustee seeking to recover more than $15.5bn dollars for victims of Madoff’s fraud, alleged in a lawsuit filed on Friday in New York that Sonja Kohn had been Madoff’s “criminal soulmate".

The suit claims that Ms Kohn and Medici Bank, a Vienna-based lender she ran, helped funnel cash to Madoff’s funds in exchange for payments totalling more than $60m.

“We refute the allegations. It has nothing to do with reality what Mr Picard has come up with,” Mr Clemens Trauttenberg, Ms Kohn’s lawyer, said from Vienna. “He hasn’t offered any evidence because there isn’t any.”

The suit against Ms Kohn was the last in a flurry filed by Mr Picard before a deadline expired last Saturday. HSBC, JPMorgan Chase and UBS were among the major international banks hit with suits alleging they ignored signs of Madoff’s fraud. All three deny the allegations.

Mark Madoff, one of Mr Madoff’s two sons, committed suicide at the weekend, exactly two years after his father was arrested. He had always denied any knowledge of the fraud for which his father is serving a 150-year jail term.