Should the actions of either Corzine or O'Brien (or both or neither) be considered criminally negligent? Unethical? Bad judgment? Other?
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Answer:
According to Protess (2017), Corzine was not informed that MF Global had violated the rules until the night that the firm went bankrupt. This event occurred after the transfer of funds had occurred. Corzine was not directly linked by the investigating agency to the missing funds. According to Fisher (n.d.), it was established that Corzine instructed employees to reduce the buffers which served to protect clients’ funds. Following the subsequent filing for bankruptcy, approximately $1.6 billion of clients funds disappeared due to alleged accounting errors and Corzine was fined $5 million for fund mismanagement. This demonstrates that Corzine acted illegally albeit not necessarily criminally and certainly poorly from both an ethical and managerial perspective.