Financial regulators are taking aim at Jon Corzine for his role in the 2011 collapse of brokerage MF Global, announcing on Thursday that they are filing civil charges against the former New Jersey governor and senator.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it is suing Corzine, who was MF Global’s chief executive, and the firm’s former Assistant Treasurer Edith O’Brien for the unlawful use of about $1 billion in customer funds that “harmed thousands of customers and violated fundamental customer protection laws on an unprecedented scale.”
Corzine, the onetime head of Goldman Sachs, returned to Wall Street when his political career ended in 2009 after he lost his reelection contest to current New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
But his attempts to transform MF Global into more of a Wall Street player blew up in late 2011, when the firm was forced to file one one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in history, which revealed more than $1 billion of missing customer money.
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