Jon S. Corzine met with federal investigators last week to discuss MF Global Holdings Ltd. and the estimated $1.6 billion that went missing from customer accounts when the brokerage firm failed, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The discussions, held in New York over two days, were the first time the former MF Global chairman and chief executive spoke to Justice Department investigators about the New York company's final days. The criminal investigators, as well as civil regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission, have been probing MF Global's demise to determine if there was any intent to remove money from customer accounts that should have been kept separate from the firm's own funds under federal rules. Just before MF Global collapsed into bankruptcy last October, some employees misused customer funds while trying to meet margin calls and keep the company alive, according to a bankruptcy trustee's investigation. Corzine, a former New Jersey governor and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chairman, testified at three congressional hearings in December that he was not aware of a shortfall in customer assets at MF Global until hours before the bankruptcy filing. Corzine has said that he never directed anyone to break rules related to customer-funds protection.
