Austria's Medici denies head hiding over Madoff

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria's Bank Medici, one of the biggest victims of Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud, on Wednesday denied a New York Times report saying its head was in hiding from disgruntled Russian clients.

Bank Medici, co-owned by UniCredit's Bank Austria, has sold some $3 billion of Madoff-exposed funds to investors, making it one of the top victims worldwide of what Madoff himself has called "a giant Ponzi scheme."

The New York Times on Wednesday reported that Bank Medici chairwoman and majority owner Sonja Kohn had gone into hiding for fear of recrimination from wealthy Russians who lost money with the funds they bought from her.

But Bank Medici said in a statement that Kohn was working in Vienna with executives of her bank and with Austrian regulators to preserve the interests of the bank and its business partners, and that it had no Russian or Ukrainian clients.

"Neither Russians nor Ukrainians have bought funds at Bank Medici," the bank said in the statement.

"Bank Medici wants to reiterate that almost all of its clients are international institutional investors, that it has no retail business, and that it does not acquire wealthy individuals as clients."

The bank, which Austria put under supervision through a government-appointed auditor last week to protect the interests of its clients and its creditors, said that it was as surprised as anybody by the revelation of the Madoff fraud.

"The Madoff fraud case came as a shock to Bank Medici as it did to the entire financial community, including the U.S. financial supervisors," it said in the statement.

(Reporting by Boris Groendahl; Editing by David Cowell)