MF Global probe uncovers shady pre-fall trades
The trustee handling the unwinding of fallen broker dealer MF Global has uncovered some “suspicious” trades made by the company in the last days leading up to its Halloween collapse, a bankruptcy judge was told yesterday.
The trades could strike at the heart of the mystery surrounding $1.2 billion in missing customer funds — and help the army of investigators searching for the cash since the Oct. 31 Chapter 11 filing.
Just 24 hours earlier, the disgraced Wall Street titan Jon Corzine, MF’s former chief executive, told lawmakers in Capitol Hill testimony that he had no idea where the cash was.
James Kobak, a lawyer for MF trustee James Giddens, did not provide any details surrounding the shady trades because there are a number of regulatory and criminal probes under way.
Corzine, 64, in three hours of testimony before the House Agriculture Committee Thursday, denied any wrongdoing and said that he never “intended” to break the law by mingling hundreds of millions in customers’ accounts with the firm’s money.
One bright spot during yesterday’s bankruptcy court hearing in downtown Manhattan was the move by Judge Martin Glenn to approve a third distribution to MF clients who have had their hard-earned cash stuck in MF accounts since Corzine’s company crashed.
Judge Glenn, setting aside creditor objections, approved the distribution of $2.2 billion to MF customers — bringing the trickling distribution to most clients to about 72 percent of their account balance.
More than a month after MF went under, regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and a host of government enforcement agents have been trying to locate some $1.2 billion in customer funds that has gone missing.
Kobak cautioned against anyone thinking that the number is exaggerated and noted that the trustee has no reason to believe that the shortfall in customer accounts is anything less than $1.2 billion.
Clients of MF, who range from small-time city-dwelling investors to grain farmers in the heartland using commodities dealers like MF to hedge their inventories, have so far received about 60 percent of their money.
The next round of distributions is slated to be rolled out over the next two-to-four weeks, noted a spokesman representing the trustee.
MF Global’s chaotic bankruptcy, the eighth largest in US history, has resulted in a slugfest between average clients and deeper-pocketed creditors who have their funds frozen as a result of the broker dealer’s collapse.
One of those heavyweight creditors, HSBC, sued MF, Global on behalf of clients claiming that it is owed $850,000 in contracts for gold and silver bullion.
Although a relatively small amount of money, the dispute highlights the hundreds of similar issues that have erupted around MF Global, whose tentacles extend to thousands of companies worldwide.
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