Hundreds of millions of dollars might have gone missing from customer accounts at MF Global Holdings Ltd. as far back as four days before the securities firm filed for bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the situation said Monday.
知情人士周一说，最早在全球曼氏金融(MF Global Holdings Ltd.)申请破产保护四天之前，这家证券公司的客户账户上可能就已经有数亿美元资金失踪。
The possibility of a shortfall in customer funds on Oct. 27 suggests problems might have emerged sooner than MF Global officials initially indicated to regulators and exchange operator CME Group Inc.
10月27日客户资金可能存在的缺口，说明问题的出现可能早于曼氏高管最初向监管机构和交易所运营商芝加哥商业交易所控股公司(CME Group Inc.)说明的时间。
Just hours before the bankruptcy filing, though, MF Global executives told regulators they believed a shortfall had somehow occurred, possibly starting on Oct. 27 or Oct. 28, these people said. Customer funds were found to be short by about $200 million on Oct. 27, according to people familiar with the matter.
这些人士说，在离申请破产仅有数小时的时候，曼氏高管对监管人员说，他们相信，客户资金不知道因为什么原因出现了缺口，可能是从10月27日或10月28日开始出现的。知情人士说，10月27日，曼氏高管发现约有2亿美元的缺口。
Details of the disclosure haven't been previously reported. As regulators investigate the company's collapse and search for the missing money, estimated at about $600 million, the timing of the shortfall could be crucial.
曼氏高管披露的这些细节此前未获报道。在监管人员调查该公司破产案并查找失踪资金（据估计约有6亿美元）的时候，缺口出现的时间可能是至关重要的。
If regulators had known sooner about the missing money, they might have intervened faster or differently. Instead, they were left with a bigger mess after MF Global tumbled into bankruptcy.
如果监管人员早些知道这些资金失踪，他们可能就已经更快地、或用另外的方式进行了干预。相反，曼氏破产后给他们留下了一个更大的烂摊子。
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also is examining whether hundreds of millions of dollars in customer accounts were transferred at MF Global during the week that began Oct. 24. The transfers weren't recorded in the firm's general ledger reviewed by exchange officials, according to the agency.
美国商品期货交易委员会(Commodity Futures Trading Commission，简称CFTC)也在调查，从10月24日开始的那一个星期，曼氏客户账户上是不是有数亿美元资金被转走。据CFTC说，交易所看到的曼氏总账簿没有这方面的转账记录。
'We're still trying to assess how far this goes back,' Thomas Smith, a CFTC official involved in the MF Global probe, said in a staff briefing with the Senate's agriculture and banking committees Monday.
参与调查曼氏的CFTC官员史密斯(Thomas Smith)周一向参议院农业委员会和银行业委员会做工作汇报。他说，我们仍在评估这是在什么时候开始发生的。
Mr. Smith said a failure to record the transactions in the general ledger is one reason regulators have had trouble finding the missing funds. The CFTC is attempting to trace the movement of the funds, including wire transfers of funds to several banks. The CFTC believes the money could still be inside MF Global, though it thinks that is a remote possibility, according to people familiar with the agency's thinking.
史密斯说，总账簿上没有记录这些交易，是监管人员查找失踪资金遇到困难的原因之一。CFTC正在尽力跟踪这些资金的动向，包括向多家银行的电子汇款。了解CFTC想法的人士说，CFTC相信这些资金可能还在曼氏内部，不过它认为这种可能性很小。
AARON LUCCHETTI / SCOTT PATTERSON
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