Email says Corzine transferred funds

Jon Corzine, the former chief executive of MF Global, may have ordered customer funds to be sent to one of his company’s own accounts just three days before the broker-dealer’s collapse, according to an email written by a recently subpoenaed company treasurer.

MF Global transferred $200 million from one of its customer accounts, held at JPMorgan, on October 28th last to cover a $175 million overdraft in one of its own business accounts in London, also held at JPMorgan, according to a memo prepared for the US congressional inquiry examining the broker-dealer’s failure.

Edith O’Brien, a former treasurer for MF Global, wrote in the email that the transfer was “per JC’s [Jon Corzine] direct instructions”, the memo said. The transfers are a point of contention in the MF Global inquiry, because they eventually helped create a $1.6 billion shortfall in customer funds.

Mr Corzine, a former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs chief executive, had previously denied to Congress that he was aware money had been transferred from clients’ accounts.

The memo’s contents look likely to reignite the debate over whether Mr Corzine played a more prominent role in the potential mixing of customer funds with MF Global’s own accounts. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012)