Corzine could be guilty of fraud. Bloomberg just broke the story.
Jon S. Corzine, MF Global Holding Ltd. (MFGLQ)’s chief executive officer, gave “direct instructions” to transfer $200 million from a customer fund account to meet an overdraft in one of the brokerage’s JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) accounts in London, according to an e-mail sent by a firm executive.
Edith O’Brien, a treasurer for the firm, said in an e-mail sent the afternoon of Oct. 28, three days before the company collapsed, that the transfer of the funds was “Per JC’s direct instructions,” according to a copy of a memo drafted by congressional investigators and obtained by Bloomberg News.
When the news first broke, I suspected as much. As the news dragged on, I assumed as much. Now we know. The treasurer of MF released a little. She has to have more. Drip, drip, drip. When will they confess? JP Morgan ($JPM), you better start talking. You are next. Where does Goldman($GS) fit in?
If true, Corzine also has committed perjury. He testified in front of Congress that he didn’t know. His fingerprints are all over it. Last month, attorney James Koutoulas and I did a presentation on the whole thing at the University Club in Chicago.
Over the course of time, since the crime was committed I have consistently been talking about fraud. The hubris of Corzine combined with the manipulation of accounting allowed them to get away with it for a short time. They ruined the reputation of an honorable industry.
When I was on Rick Santelli’s show, I mentioned RICO statutes. Why won’t they be used now? The guy that comes out smelling like a rose in all this is ($CME)CME chairman Terry Duffy. It was he who initiated discussions with people like Koutoulas. It was he that finally went off script in front of Congress and spilled the beans-probably to the horror of his own attorneys.
Do they even care or realize how many people’s lives they have disrupted unnecessarily? All they had to do was go bankrupt like any other futures firms and markets and people wouldn’t have been hurt. Do they even care or realize how much damage they have done to risk management at the farm and family level? Do they realize that they impacted GDP by making costs escalate? Do they care? I doubt it.
Josh Brown tweeted that Corzine was last seen in a white Ford Bronco. I tweeted back that CFTC chair Gary Gensler, and Obama accolyte, was driving. He can run, but he can’t hide.
UPDATE
Lawyer James Koutoulas tweeted, “In & of itself, this memo is NOT a smoking gun (see footnote 2,pg3). Mgmt trying to force Edith to sign JPM letter letter may be tho”
Why isn’t the government giving immunity to Edith?