The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has announced its annual compliance and enforcement results for the year 2019 on November 26, 2019. As per the results, the Commission has managed to pull in more than 1.3 billion dollars in restitution, penalties, and disgorgement for the term that began on October 1, 2018, and ended on September 30, 2019.
The results also brought a few high-profile cases to limelight including those charged with spoofing, manipulation, as well as the illegal usage of consumer funds during the said fiscal year.
What is important to note is that the rate of penalties this year is 39% up from the last year. If that was not interesting enough, 2019’s penalty figures are the 4th highest in the Commission’s history so far.
The results also highlighted that the CFTC took a total of 69 enforcement actions this year. This figure was 67 in the previous year. Out of this total, only 4 cases did not fall into the charges of spoofing, commodities fraud, or manipulative conduct. According to the Commission, they have pursued what they call complex and significant litigations this year in diverse cases.
Apart from that, the reports also pointed out that the CFTC was able to secure enforceable commitments to high-end cases via landmark settlements. These cases spanned the whole spectrum of the market space. Some of the misconduct examples include spoofing, manipulation in benchmark rates, and retail fraud involving digital currencies.
The report also presents several enforcement actions against several crypto schemes, which the Commission considers as their key milestone during the year.
Initiatives for whistleblowers
The report has also thrown lights on the initiatives taken by the Division of Enforcement of CFTC to support their whistleblowers’ programs. Such programs help ensure support and streamlining of investigations through rewards and encouragement of tipsters. Many of the US regulatory organizations, including the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) and CFTC, employ such programs.
Interestingly, this year, the Commission has issued five whistleblower awards, worth around 15 million dollars in total, which is quite low as compared to the previous term. Last year, 75 million dollars were handed out in total five awards to tipsters with the largest one being of 30 million dollars.
No slowing down
The report also noted that the CFTC is going to continue its enforcement activities with the same vigor in the new financial year as well, without slowing down.
