Employees of MF Global's British offices may have received their quarterly bonuses last Monday, just hours before MF Global filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York, The Telegraph is reporting.

It's an interesting development - because last Monday, Robert Preston at the BBC reported very early in the morning that London employees had been sent home. Maybe they were sent home with their bonuses?

MF Global's bankruptcy was announced at around 10:30 a.m. EST last Monday - that was 2:30 p.m. London time. (England is usually five hours ahead of the US - but their daylight savings time occurs one week before the US, so London was only four hours ahead last Monday.)

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that bonuses were also paid out to US employees, but the payments in both the UK and the US were part of a routine procedure and processed days before the company went bankrupt. So it doesn't seem like there's been any foul play, as bonuses was just any part of a normal operational firm (before bankruptcy, at least). However, that still doesn't pacify the company's frustrated clients who still don't have their money.

In fact, this news could add fire to the anger brewing among MF Global clients - some 50,000 accounts - who're still trying to get their money back after having their money frozen last week when the firm filed for bankruptcy. Yesterday, it was reported that over half of MF Global's 1.6 million open positions for UK clients still remained open as KPMG, the administrator for the UK operation, scrambled to close them.

Also - that $600 million of customer funds is still missing.