CFTC Releases Its Annual Enforcement Report

The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recently released its Division of Enforcement’s annual report for fiscal year 2019. This, the second annual report, overviews the prosecution efforts the division took throughout the last year to combat commodities fraud, manipulative behavior and misappropriation of confidential information.

Some of the highlights of the report include the following notes:

• Enforcement actions filed by the CFTC during the last fiscal year (69 total) saw a slight increase over the average of the previous five years (67.5)
• The CFTC filed more cases involving manipulative conduct than any previous year except for 2018
• The CFTC filed more actions alongside criminal authorities and investigations than any previous year
• The CFTC awarded more than $1.3 billion in monetary relief, a 39 percent increase over 2018 and the fourth-highest total in the history of the CFTC
• About 65 percent of the cases in 2019 involved commodities fraud, spoofing or manipulative conduct

It is expected that enforcement activity at the CFTC will continue to come at a steady pace into the new year. As always, the DOE’s enforcement guidelines are to protect customers, preserve market integrity, promote individual accountability and increase its coordination efforts with other criminal authorities and regulatory bodies.

If you are interested in learning more about the CFTC’s whistleblower program and the situations in which it makes the most sense for you to report to that agency, we encourage you to contact our team of professional whistleblower attorneys at Kardell Law Group today with any questions you have.