Pool photo by Andrew HarrerJon S. Corzine, the former chief of MF Global.
9:02 p.m. | Updated
Jon S. Corzine, the former chief executive of MF Global, faces up to three Congressional subpoenas, as lawmakers seek to question him about the collapse of his brokerage firm.
The House Agriculture Committee voted unanimously on Friday to force Mr. Corzine to appear at a hearing next Thursday about MF Global, where as much as $1.2 billion in customer money remains missing. Customers of the brokerage firm included farmers and agriculture companies, as well as hedge funds and other investors.
The committee’s hearing will present the first public questioning of Mr. Corzine since MF Global filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 31. Mr. Corzine ran MF Global before he resigned on Nov. 4.
“We agree that his testimony is essential to fulfill our objectives on behalf of our constituents and to complete the hearing record,” the committee’s chairman, Frank Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma, said at the committee meeting.
Mr. Corzine also faces demands to testify from two other Congressional panels. The Senate Agriculture Committee will meet on Tuesday to vote on issuing a subpoena to Mr. Corzine, a move that comes after he did not voluntarily testify by a Friday deadline. The other panel, the oversight subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, will meet on Wednesday to vote on issuing a subpoena to Mr. Corzine.
“For the past week, we led a good-faith effort to obtain his testimony voluntarily,” Representative Randy Neugebauer, the House panel’s chairman and a Republican from Texas, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it has become clear that is not possible so the subcommittee will meet to consider the issuance of a subpoena.”
The disappearance of the customer money from MF Global has also spawned a sprawling federal investigation, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission leading the search for the missing money and the Federal Bureau of Investigation examining a potential criminal case. The trustee overseeing the liquidation of MF Global’s brokerage unit is also hunting for the customer cash.
Mr. Corzine has not been accused of any wrongdoing. A representative for Mr. Corzine declined to comment.
The Congressional hearings will be an awkward return to Capitol Hill for Mr. Corzine, who spent five years in Washington as a Democratic senator from New Jersey. He left his Senate seat to become the governor of New Jersey, a job he lost in 2009.
The House Agriculture Committee’s hearing will be quickly followed by the two other Congressional hearings examining MF Global. The Senate Agriculture Committee will hold its hearing on Dec. 13, and the oversight panel of the House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on Dec. 15.
In a preview of the coming hearings, members of the Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday aggressively questioned MF Global’s regulators about the firm’s collapse. With the customer money still missing more than a month after the firm’s Chapter 11 filing, lawmakers noted, some futures industry customers are losing patience.
“MF Global has shattered the faith of customers in the futures markets,” Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat and the committee’s chairwoman, said at that hearing.
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