A government regulator said in court Wednesday that roughly $600 million is missing from the books of bankrupt brokerage MF Global.
“MF Global has discovered a shortfall of segregated accounts of around $600 million,” a lawyer with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said, adding that this is a preliminary figure that could increase.
The FBI and federal prosecutors are now attempting to investigate how some $600 million of MF Global customers’ money went missing. In court on Wednesday, a motion by James Giddens, the trustee for MF Global’s liquidation, was approved, allowing for the partial transfer of 50,000 commodity accounts at the firm to other brokerages in order to prevent liquidations. The transfers will unfreeze commodity positions with a notional value of $100 billion, the trustee said in a press release Wednesday.