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The U.S. Supreme Court let the liquidator of Bernard Madoff’s investment firm press ahead with efforts to recoup $3 billion from European banks and other overseas investors, Bloomberg News reported. The justices, without comment yesterday, turned away an appeal by investors led by HSBC Holdings Plc who said trustee Irving Picard was impermissibly trying to apply U.S. bankruptcy law to foreign transactions. A federal appeals court let Picard sue the investors. The case affects foreign customers of Fairfield Greenwich Group and other offshore feeder funds that channeled investors’ money to Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. The investors include Koch Industries, whose chairman and chief executive officer, Charles Koch, is a major Republican patron. The investors allegedly withdrew more money than they put in before Madoff’s Ponzi scheme collapsed in 2008. The money is the biggest remaining bucket of cash being sought by Picard as he tries to compensate customers who lost $19 billion in principal after Madoff’s arrest. So far Picard has recovered more than $14 billion and distributed more than $13 billion to victims — significantly more than many predicted when he was appointed in 2008.