When $1.6 billion of customer money goes missing, you'd think it would be easier to punish someone for it. Not so at MF Global, the brokerage firm that misplaced the impressive 10-figure sum around the same time that it declared bankruptcy in October. The missing money has since been found, but identifying the parties responsible for the episode has proved more difficult.
As The Wall Street Journal reports this week, many senior
executives at MF Global -- including finance chief Henri Steenkamp, treasurer
Vinay Mahajan and assistant treasurer Edith O'Brien -- aren't even registered
with regulators, meaning they can't be formally charged with a failure to
supervise in the missing-money case.
Regulators had been looking especially closely at Steenkamp
lately, asking why he claimed at one point to know little about the missing
funds when company e-mails show that he was in the same loop as everyone else. O'Brien, too, has been singled out by people
looking into the matter. In March, at a Congressional hearing, O'Brien pled the
Fifth Amendment when asked about her role in the transfer of $200 million in
customer funds.
But since former CEO Jon Corzine was the only MF Global
employee registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last October,
neither Steenkamp nor O'Brien can be held responsible for a failure to supervise….
More? Check out http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303444204577460810759748848.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
No comments:
Post a Comment