MF?s Corzine Ordered Funds Moved to JP Morgan, Memo Says:

"Jon S. Corzine, MF Global Holding Ltd. (MFGLQ)?s chief executive officer, gave ?direct instructions? to transfer $200 million from a customer fund account to meet an overdraft in a brokerage account with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), according to a memo written by congressional investigators"

...

?I never gave any instruction to misuse customer funds, I never intended anyone at MF Global to misuse customer funds and I don?t believe that anything I said could reasonably have been interpreted as an instruction to misuse customer funds,? Corzine told lawmakers in December"

Corzine victims jeer at chief MFer?s 'explanation'

New York Post
By KAJA WHITEHOUSE
December 9, 2011

He?s sorry, all right.

Victims of MF Global?s collapse don?t buy Jon Corzine?s sob story, after he told lawmakers that he?s ?devastated? and ?stunned? by the firm?s downfall and clueless as to the whereabouts of $1.2 billion in missing client cash.

Burned customers blasted Corzine?s testimony yesterday before a congressional committee investigating MF?s demise and the missing money, calling his claims of ignorance ?a pathetic joke? and ?a lie.?

?What a joke! What a pathetic joke,? Stanley Haar, an MF customer in Boca Raton, Fla., told The Post after watching Corzine?s more than three hours of questioning by House lawmakers.

?I didn?t believe anything that he said, starting from when he took his oath.?

?I just think it?s a bunch of BS,? said Jennifer DeRuzza, an MF customer from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ?How could he not know this was going on??

In his first public appearance since he resigned from the firm Nov. 4, Corzine apologized to his former commodity brokerage customers before the House Committee on Agriculture, which issued a subpoena to force him to testify.

?I appear at today?s hearing with great sadness,? he said. ?Their plight weighs on my mind every day ? every hour.?

He defended his huge bets on risky European debt, saying that MF?s board of directors was kept abreast of the situation.

The former New Jersey governor and senator also claimed to be as puzzled as investigators searching for $1.2 billion in client cash that may have been mixed up with the firm?s own in its last desperate days ? a flagrant violation of regulations.

?I simply do not know where the money is,? Corzine said to the exasperation of MF customers.

He painted a picture of a chaotic collapse at MF, which resulted in ?many, many, many more transactions than typically occurred.?

Any co-mingling of clients? funds with firm money ? a cardinal sin for brokerages ? was ?never intended,? he said.

But clients, many of whom used their MF accounts to pay monthly bills, scoffed at the idea that the former head of Goldman Sachs was kept in the dark about the missing funds until the night before the firm filed for bankruptcy.

?To me, it was a scripted performance and he?s a polished politician,? said Nick Gentile, a money manager in Jersey City, NJ. ?He?s totally responsible.?

?It?s a lie,? said Rambod Poursalimi, whose retired 73-year-old father, Parviz, was relying on his $150,000 MF account to pay for medications and medical bills.

?If it was $10 million, or $20 million, or $50 million, or even $100 million, it might be somewhat of a reasonable assumption.?

Poursalimi thinks the fact that dozens of investigators have been combing through MF?s books for more than a month with still no answers suggests the problem had been going on well before MF?s Halloween collapse.

Other customers say they think MF?s top executives were trying to protect the firm?s troubled bets on European debt in the final days.

Corzine has not been accused of any crimes. The FBI and the Justice Department are investigating the missing funds.

Yesterday, regulators said they are seeking interviews with other MF executives, in hopes they find the money and piece together what happened.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business ... VUapCSRbckJ#ixzz1g57LubwJ

It would seem that you have to be a criminal to be a politician - no wonder our country is financially screwed up.






http://www.thefullwiki.org/Jerramiah_Healy

click the link

Gov. Christie says he feels bad for Jon Corzine and his failed Wall Street firm

Wednesday, November 02, 2011
By The Associated Press

Gov. Chris Christie pictured today in Liberty State Park in Jersey City, said he feels badly for former Gov. Jon Corzine and the investors of MF Global.

JERSEY CITY ? New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he feels bad for his 2009 political opponent, then-Gov. Jon Corzine, and the investors of MF Global, the Corzine-led securities firm that filed for bankruptcy protection Monday.

Christie said today it must be tough for someone as competitive as Corzine to be confronted with a failed business venture. The former federal prosecutor says he also hopes the firm's investors can recover their money.

A federal investigation is expected into how the company handled its funds as financial troubles mounted.

Christie defeated the 64-year-old Democrat in the governor's race two years ago. The former Goldman Sachs CEO returned to Wall Street to run MF Global.

Christie says his relations with Corzine have been cordial since the election.

Quote:

He lives right here in Hudson County at Maxwell Place in Hoboken.

I think the OWS group should look up Corzine's address and go protest at his house. They could stink him out and force him to tell where the missing money is? What a good idea! (lol?)

Regulators Investigating MF Global for Missing Money

BY BEN PROTESS, MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED AND SUSANNE CRAIG
New York Times
9:20 p.m.

Federal regulators have discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money has gone missing from MF Global in recent days, prompting an investigation into the brokerage firm, which is run by Jon S. Corzine, the former New Jersey governor, several people briefed on the matter said on Monday.

The recognition that money was missing scuttled at the 11th hour an agreement to sell a major part of MF Global to a rival brokerage firm. MF Global had staked its survival on completing the deal. Instead, the New York-based firm filed for bankruptcy on Monday.

Regulators are examining whether MF Global diverted some customer funds to support its own trades as the firm teetered on the brink of collapse.

MF Global Bankruptcy Rattles Wall St. Firms

The discovery that money could not be located might simply reflect sloppy internal controls at MF Global. It is still unclear where the money went. At first, as much as $950 million was believed to be missing, but as the firm sorted through its bankruptcy, that figure fell to less than $700 million by late Monday, the people briefed on the matter said. Additional funds are expected to trickle in over the coming days.

But the investigation, which is in its earliest stages, may uncover something more intentional and troubling.

In any case, the unaccounted-for cash could violate a fundamental tenet of Wall Street regulation: Customers? funds must be kept separate from company money. One of the basic duties of any brokerage firm is to keep track of customer accounts on a daily basis.

Neither MF Global nor Mr. Corzine has been accused of any wrongdoing. Lawyers for MF Global did not respond to requests for comment.

Still, the inquiry threatens to tarnish further the reputation of Mr. Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs executive who had sought to revive his Wall Street career last year just a few months after being defeated for re-election as New Jersey?s governor.

When he arrived at MF Global ? after more than a decade in politics, including serving as a Democratic United States senator from New Jersey ? Mr. Corzine sought to bolster profits by increasing the number of bets the firm made using its own capital. It was a strategy born of his own experience at Goldman, where he rose through the ranks by building out the investment bank?s formidable United States government bond trading arm.

One of his hallmark traits, according to the 1999 book on Goldman, ?Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success,? by Lisa Endlich, was his willingness to tolerate losses if the theory behind the trades was well thought out.

He made a similar wager at MF Global in buying up big holdings of debt from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium and Ireland at a discount. Once Europe had solved its fiscal problems, those bonds would be very profitable.

But when that bet came to light in a regulatory filing, it set off alarms on Wall Street. While the bonds themselves have lost little value and mature in less than a year, MF Global was seen as having taken on an enormous amount of risk with little room for error given its size.

Indeed, the collapse of MF Global underscores how nervous investors are about Europe?s debt crisis. Other financial institutions have been buffeted in recent months about their holdings of debt issued by weak European countries. The concerns about MF Global?s exposure to Europe prompted two ratings agencies to cut their ratings on the firm to junk last week.

The firm played down the effect of the ratings, saying, ?We believe that it bears no implications for our clients or the strategic direction of MF Global.?

Even by Sunday evening, MF Global thought it had averted death after a disastrous week. Over five days, the firm lost more than 67 percent of its market value and was downgraded to junk status, which prompted investor desertions and raised borrowing costs.

Mr. Corzine and his advisers frantically called nearly every major Wall Street player, hoping to sell at least some of the firm in a bid for survival.

On Friday, BlackRock was hired to help MF Global wind down its balance sheet, including by selling its holdings of European debt. BlackRock was able to value the portfolio, but MF Global ?s books were a mess, according to people close to the talks.

By Saturday, Jefferies & Company became the lead bidder to buy large portions of MF Global, before backing out late in the day.

On Sunday, a rival firm, Interactive Brokers, emerged as the new favorite. But the Connecticut-based firm coveted only MF Global?s futures and securities customers.

While MF Global was resigned to putting its parent company into bankruptcy, Interactive Brokers was also willing to help prop up other MF Global units, including a British affiliate.

By late Sunday evening, an embattled MF Global had all but signed a deal with Interactive Brokers. The acquisition would have mirrored what Lehman Brothers did in 2008, when its parent filed for bankruptcy but Barclays of Britain bought some of its assets.

But in the middle of the night, as Interactive Brokers investigated MF Global?s customer accounts, the potential buyer discovered a serious obstacle: Some of the customer money was missing, according to people close to the discussions. The realization spooked Interactive Brokers, which then abandoned the deal.

Later on Monday, when explaining to regulators why the deal fell apart, MF Global disclosed the concerns over the missing money, according to a joint statement issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Regulators, however, first suspected a potential shortfall days ago as they gathered at MF Global?s Midtown Manhattan headquarters, the people briefed on the matter said. It?s not uncommon for some funds to be unaccounted for when a financial firm fails, but the magnitude in the case of MF Global is unnerving.

For now, there is confusion surrounding the missing MF Global funds. It is likely, one person briefed on the matter said, that some of the money may be ?stuck in the system? as banks holding the customer funds hesitated last week to send MF Global the money.

But the firm has yet to produce evidence that all of the $600 million or $700 million outstanding is deposited with the banks, according to the people briefed on the matter. Regulators are looking into whether the customer funds were misallocated.

With the deal with Interactive Brokers dashed, MF Global was hanging in limbo for several hours before it filed for bankruptcy. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a number of exchanges said they had suspended MF Global from conducting new business with them.

It was not the first time regulators expressed concerns about MF Global.

MF Global confirmed on Monday that two regulators ? the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission ? had ?expressed their grave concerns? about the firm?s viability.

By midmorning on Monday, the firm filed for bankruptcy.

Azam Ahmed contributed reporting.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/3 ... -investigating-mf-global/