BY RYAN SCHMIDT

ANCHOR ANA COMPAIN-ROMERO

Congress wants to know what happened to the money. Bloomberg’s Margaret Brennan has the details:

“Former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine is here at the Capitol to testify about the collapse of his firm.  He’s the first former senator in more than a century to be subpoened by Congress.”

Before he even appeared in front of the committee, Corzine’s prepared testimony was making waves. House Committee on Agriculture chair Frank Lucas asked Corzine if there was a shortfall in MF Global’s customer funds. This was Corzine’s response:

“Mr. Chairman, I know only what I read, and it certainly was true on the late evening of the 30th of October that there were unreconciled accounts.”

But he says he doesn’t know where the money is. By the way that money he’s referring to, that $1.2 billion...with a B.

Corzine joined agriculture broker MF Global in 2010, after losing the November 2009 New Jersey governor’s race to current governor Chris Christie.  

The Examiner reports on October 29, 2011, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange said the company was short $600 million in customers’ accounts. Two days later, on October 31, MF Global claimed bankruptcy, with Corzine resigning from the company on November 4.

So what happened to all the money? Former founder and CEO of Barnhardt Capital Management Ann Barnhardt tells Financial Sense’s Jim Puplava there’s no way the money is missing:

“They were stolen. They were stolen by Jon Corzine and his cadre of associates at MF Global... this man has stolen in excess of a billion dollars. I think by the time it is all panned out it is going to be closer to $3 billion of customer funds that he stole.”

The Washington Post reports Congress is putting part of the blame on the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who is responsible for keeping tabs on the industry. Commissioner Jill Sommers says the CFTC will take the necessary steps to keep this from happening again:

 

“The Commission has a great deal of work ahead to get customers funds back where they need to be, to determine what went wrong with segregated funds at MF Global... and to determine what needs to be done to prevent a similar circumstance in the future.”

But as Fox Business’s Peter Barnes suggests -- this could be bigger than Corzine -- who told the committee he was “stunned” to hear of the missing funds.

“When questioned about his role in the missing funds here by one of the committee members he said, quote, ‘I would never intend or direct to have fund moved.’ A critical statement by him. All of the MF global executives are under suspicion in this but we heard him say his board of directors approved some of the risky bets that sank MF Global...”

What’s next for the former CEO?  The New York Post reports Corzine will speak before the Senate Agriculture Committee on December 13th.