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In the United States two of the biggest
lawsuits in regard to the manipulation of commodity prices are under way. The
claimants in these lawsuits accuse the major, internationally operating banks
JPMorgan and HSBC of having manipulated the silver prices.
Only a few days ago Bart Chilton, high ranking
member of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), publicly
explained for the first time that the continuous accusations regarding the manipulation of certain commodity
classes could be well-founded.
Within the last 48 hours two lawsuits were filed independently of one another
against these two large banks in New York. Claimants in the first lawsuit are
the two independently active COMEX traders Brian Beatty and Peter Laskaris, who claim to have been harmed financially by
spoof orders placed by JPMorgan and HSBC at the silver market.
The second lawsuit is based on the statements
of a whistleblower, who works for the London office of JPMorgan. According to
him, JPMorgan as well as HSBC were involved in a two-year investigation of US
regulators that was supposed to analyse whether big
market players had manipulated the silver market in the past. If these
accusations prove to be well-founded, the US regulators may also face a large
amount of judicial trouble in the future, since everybody could add their
claims to the on-going lawsuits.
According to documents submitted to the
courts, the accused banks may have seriously manipulated the prices at the
silver market through the placement of spoof orders during the last few
years. In the course of this manipulation scheme, huge orders were placed at
the markets and were then withdrawn shortly before their executions. If the
claimants were able to prove their accusations are true, the banks involved
would have to expect very high fines, since they would be guilty of evading
the anti-monopoly rules.
Roman Baudzus
Goldmoney.com
All
data and quotes sourced from Reuters.
Published by GoldMoney
Copyright © 2010. All rights reserved.
Written by Gillian Campbell
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