Jon Corzine is near a tentative agreement to resolve a U.S. regulator’s allegations that he failed to properly oversee MF Global Holdings Ltd. as the brokerage unit spiraled toward failure almost five years ago, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Corzine, 69, who earlier served as New Jersey’s governor, a U.S. senator and the co-chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., may pay $5 million out of his own pocket to settle the claims from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The tentative agreement may be announced by the end of the year. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported the news earlier Thursday.

Andrew Levander, a New York lawyer representing Corzine, didn’t return requests for comment left with his office after regular business hours.

Corzine joined the futures brokerage in March 2010 with a plan to remake the company into an investment bank in the image of Goldman Sachs, where he had been spent his career before entering politics. Corzine increased the firm’s risk and used its own money to trade, including investments in European sovereign debt that were rattling markets.

The firm owned $6.3 billion of Italian, Spanish, Belgian, Portuguese and Irish debt in October 2011, a week before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York. The brokerage’s parent listed debt of $39.7 billion and assets of $41 billion.

In 2013, the brokerage unit was fined $100 million by the CFTC and admitted regulatory failures.