Sergei Klebnikov, 29 September 2020
JPMorgan Chase will pay a record $920 million to resolve a criminal investigation by three federal agencies over its role in the alleged manipulation of precious metal and Treasury markets, federal regulators said on Tuesday.
JPMorgan agreed to a settlement that resolves investigations by the Justice Department, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
As part of the deal, the bank will admit to wrongdoing and pay a record fine of $920 million, according to a statement from the CFTC on Tuesday.
The fine is the largest ever imposed on a bank for spoofing, a type of market manipulation where traders flood markets with orders they don’t actually execute with the intention of creating an illusion of demand.
The practice was banned in 2008 after the financial crisis, and in recent years federal regulators have ramped up efforts to crack down on market manipulation.
The charges against JPMorgan were for “manipulative and deceptive conduct and spoofing that spanned at least eight years and involved hundreds of thousands of spoof orders in precious metals and U.S. Treasury futures contracts,” according to the CFTC.
