Clients of Credit Suisse could have lost as much as SwFr1 billion (£640 million) that they had invested with Bernard Madoff, according to internal forecasts.

Mr Madoff is to go on trial in the United States for allegedly running a global confidence scheme. A spokeswoman for the bank said: “Credit Suisse did not actively sell stakes in Madoff funds to the bank's clients and there were no Madoff funds on the Credit Suisse ‘recommended' list. Also, no fund of hedge funds structured by Credit Suisse contained Madoff funds.”

Credit Suisse had said previously that the bank's exposure to the Madoff fraud was minimal. Funds managed by Swiss banks have been prominent victims of Mr Madoff, who is accused of running a Ponzi scheme, whereby investors are paid off with funds acquired from subsequent clients. UBS, a Credit Suisse rival that is based in Switzerland, is said to have invested $1.4 billion (£960 million) in Mr Madoff's funds.

Stephen Harbeck, the chief executive of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation and the official receiver of Mr Madoff's bankrupt funds, has promised investors that the hunt for missing funds would be global in its scope.

“We will trace funds wherever the trail goes,” Mr Harbeck said last week in New York, “but it is still too early to say with any certainty what was going on inside Madoff's business.”

It has been reported that investigators could be looking into whether Mr Madoff salted away money in offshore accounts. A judge in New York ruled last week that Mr Madoff's investors would receive a maximum of $100,000 in compensation, no matter how much they had lost. Claims for compensation will also be restricted to investors who can prove that they sent money to Mr Madoff in the year before his arrest on December 11.

The affair took a darker turn before Christmas when a French investment manager who had entrusted Mr Madoff with $2.1 billion was found dead in New York. Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, 65, is thought to have committed suicide. He was found at his desk with both wrists slashed. A boxcutter and a bottle of sleeping pills were on the floor. He was the chief executive of Access International Advisors, a fund management company that had invested three quarters of its cash with Mr Madoff on behalf of European clients.

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