Lisa Du, Business Insider, 12-21-2011
James Koutoulas, one of the founders of the Commodity Customer Coalition—which represents the interests of over 8,000 MF Global customers, was just on CNBC to talk about the recent blitz of news on the investigation into MF Global’s missing customer money.
Koutoulas addressed a bank that’s been popping up a lot in the investigation: JP Morgan. Reports this morning addressed emails that were sent between JP Morgan and MF Global in the brokerage firm’s last days, and also the legality of a previously reported $200 million transfer from MF Global to JP Morgan.
Last week, it was announced that JP Morgan’s involvement in the MF Global debacle would be investigated.
Koutoulas and the CCC has also taken on an active role against JPM—they’ve called for an active boycott of the bank, and they’re talking about it on Twitter with the hashtag #BoycottJPM. He also gave his reasons for why JP Morgan’s involvement was suspicious:
“[JP Morgan] wear way too many hats in this situation. Their fingers are all over this. They were a custodian of customer segregated funds, they were a primary lender to MF Global…, they were head of the creditors’ committee in bankruptcy court, they’re buying customer claims for pennies on the dollar—vulture claims, and it appears that they just may have gotten favorable treatment by purchasing LME stock from MF Global… as well as buying these sovereign debt positions that have turned out to be profitable trades.”