A federal court in New York fined two United Arab Emirates residents more than $2.6 million to settle charges of "spoofing" in the gold and silver futures markets and permanently banned them from trading, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Tuesday. Spoofing involves rapidly entering and then cancelling orders to manipulate prices in a market. Heet Khara and Nasim Salim allegedly placed "larger aggregate orders for gold and silver contracts on the Commodity Exchange, Inc" with the "intent to cancel them before execution," the CFTC said.
They placed the orders against smaller orders for opposite positions and then cancelled them after the smaller orders were executed, the CFTC said. Khara has been ordered to pay $1.38 million and Salim $1.31 million, the CFTC said. CME Group Inc suspended the two traders from its markets a year ago for allegedly colluding to enter orders repeatedly with no intention of trading.
In May, the CFTC, the chief US regulator of commodities trading, filed a complaint in federal court. It said on Tuesday that CME Group, the Securities and Commodities Authority of the United Arab Emirates and the Dubai Financial Services Authority had assisted and cooperated in the case. An attorney for the two traders declined to comment. Last month a British judge approved a US request for extradition of Navinder Sarao, an infamous trader based in London who is accused of contributing to the 2010 Wall Street "flash crash" and is wanted in the United States to face trial on 22 criminal counts of wire fraud, commodities fraud and market manipulation.