Damming email ties Cortiee to funds
FORMER NEW JERSEY governor Jon Corzine may have been caught telling lies to Congress about the collapse of his international brokerage house, Mfglobal.
A potentially damning email from an MF Global executive dug up by congressional investigators and released Friday says Corzine ordered that $200 million be transferred out of a customer’s account — violating protocols — days before the firm went belly up.
In the email, sent last Oct. 28, former MF Global assistant treasurer Edith O’brien says Corzine directed the funds to be moved overseas to cover a shortfall in a company account with JP Morgan in London. It noted the transfer was made “per JC’S direct instructions.”
If true, that would contradict the embattled ex-pol’s earlier statements to a house Financial Services subcommittee that he“never gave any instruction to anyone at MF Global to misuse customer funds.”
Client accounts, by law, are required to be kept separate from a firm’s funds to protect investors in the event the company fails.
MF Global, for which Corzine served as CEO, declared bankruptcy last Oct. 31, after sinking $6 billion into European government bonds just before the financial crisis spread across the continent. Some $1.6 billion in client money has never been recovered.
JP Morgan’s chief risk officer, Barry Zubrow, reached out to Corzine for assurances that he would be using company— not client— money to cover the overdraft, Bloomberg News reported. He also asked O’brien to sign a letter certifying the same. It was never signed.