CME Chairman Terry Duffy tells the Senate that Jon Corzine was aware that customer accounts were being illegally tapped for MF Global collateral - Dec. 13, 2011.
This is the congressional clip where the hint was first dropped. We assumed at the time it was Edith O'Brien. It is in fact, O'Brien's boss, Christine Serwinski, who was on vacation during the final week of customer pillaging.
Gasparino broke the story yesterday.
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Janet Tavakoli:
On October 28, JPMorgan didn't buy Corzine's story, either. Having been a risk manager myself, I believe Barry Zubrow, JPMorgan's chief risk officer, did exactly the right thing. He called Jon Corzine to get him to verify that the funds belonged to MF Global and that none of the money was customer money. Zubrow, an outsider, was well aware of the possibility that customer funds had been transferred. It's implausible that Corzine wasn't aware of the potential impermissible transfer of customer funds when he gave the authority to make the transfer. By doing its job, JPMorgan removed Corzine's ability to credibly deny knowledge of the potential problem.
As for JPMorgan, it asked Jon Corzine for a signed letter stating that the transfer was legitimate. He reportedly responded: "Send me the letter and we'll have our people look at it." It was disingenuous of Jon Corzine to pass JPMorgan's letter to Edith O'Brien to sign given that it asked for a sign-off that all "past, present and future" transfers complied with the law. Ms. O'Brien would have been asked to take responsibility for all transfers without having the authority over them. Jon Corzine had the broad authority to sign the letter, but by passing it on, he effectively stalled.
JPMorgan sent additional versions of this letter in response to MF Global's requests for revisions, but JPMorgan never received a signed letter back.
A true must see: