Editing Robert Vesco (section)

==Investors Overseas Services (IOS) Scandal==
In 1970, Vesco targeted [[Investors Overseas Services]] (IOS), a Swiss-based mutual fund managed by Bernard Cornfeld with $1.5 billion in holdings. IOS was faltering under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) scrutiny, and Vesco seized the opportunity, acquiring control for less than $5 million in a hostile takeover opposed by Cornfeld, who was jailed in Switzerland. The SEC accused Vesco of looting $224 million from IOS funds, diverting assets through dummy corporations, including one linked to [[Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands]], per The Guardian. He allegedly broke into a Swiss bank vault to secure IOS shares which were rumored at the time to be intelligence related due to the software being used with backdoors to intelligence agencies including the CIA. By 1972, with charges imminent, Vesco fled the U.S. aboard a corporate jet, taking an estimated $200 million of IOS’s investments, according to SEC allegations.