By Douwe Miedema
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of Republican lawmakers called on Friday for a criminal investigation of Jon Corzine, the head of failed futures broker MF Global, saying he may have committed perjury when speaking before Congress in 2011.
Corzine, a Democrat who previously served as New Jersey's governor and senator, headed MF Global when it collapsed in October 2011 in one of the 10 biggest U.S. bankruptcies.
Customers were left reeling when it was discovered that about $1.6 billion was missing from their accounts. That money turned out to have been used as stop gaps, which is illegal and caused public outrage.
Corzine maintained during several Congressional hearings that he did not know what happened to the money. But recorded conversations unearthed by MF Global's regulator showed otherwise, the members of the House of Representatives said.
"There is no way Mr. Corzine could have been "stunned" to learn of hundreds of millions of dollars of missing client funds," they said in the letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that was dated August 1.
Keep reading: Lawmakers want perjury probe for Corzine – Yahoo! Finance.
