CFTC staff told to withdraw referral on oil trades before Iran post

The record

Staff at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) who flagged a burst of crude oil futures trading on the morning of 23 March 2026 were later told to retract their referral to the agency’s enforcement lawyers, Bloomberg reported on 13 October. According to Bloomberg, the instruction came from Mel Gunewardena, a senior adviser to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig.

The trades were placed around 6:49 a.m. US Eastern time, about 15 minutes before President Donald Trump posted that he was postponing “any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period”, as the wording is quoted in a later letter from US senators. Oil prices fell sharply after the post.

What the analysts flagged

Traders sold Brent and West Texas Intermediate contracts in a window of about two minutes. A calculation first published by the Financial Times put the volume at about 6,200 contracts, worth some $580m, equivalent to at least 6 million barrels. Analysts on the CFTC’s market oversight team referred the activity to the Division of Enforcement, which Bloomberg describes as standard practice.

A similar pattern was reported on 7 April, when, according to a letter from Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse dated 9 April, traders placed an approximately $950m bet on falling oil prices in the hours before a two-week ceasefire with Iran was announced.

The retraction

According to Bloomberg, Gunewardena, a former Goldman Sachs and State Street executive who had rejoined the agency weeks earlier, told a market oversight supervisor to withdraw the referral and set up his own team to analyse the data again. An agency official told Bloomberg the original work was focused on the US and that a broader international review was needed. By July the supervisor had left the CFTC; it is not clear whether other departures were related.

Bloomberg reports that the enforcement division is still examining the March trading and that the Justice Department opened a parallel investigation. Aitan Goelman, a former CFTC enforcement director, told Bloomberg that such a step would previously have been “never done”.

Congressional pressure

In their April letter, Warren and Whitehouse asked the CFTC to investigate. On 27 May, Senator Raphael Warnock, joined by Senators Amy Klobuchar, Elissa Slotkin, Cory Booker and Ben Ray Luján, asked for a public update and a briefing by 15 June, citing the CFTC’s anti-manipulation rule, 17 CFR 180.1. Selig had told the House Agriculture Committee on 16 April: “we will find you, and you will face the full force of the law.”

The responses

A CFTC spokesperson said: “The CFTC does not confirm or deny any investigation.” The accounts of Bloomberg’s report reviewed by The Ledgers include no comment from Gunewardena. A White House spokesman has previously described suggestions of profiteering as “baseless and irresponsible”.

Questions that remain unanswered

Why was a routine staff referral withdrawn rather than reviewed by the enforcement division? Has the new analysis been completed, and will its findings be shared with Congress as the senators requested? And who placed the March 23 orders?

No trader or firm has been publicly identified, and no one has been accused by any authority of trading on non-public information. Unusual timing alone does not establish wrongdoing. The investigations reported by Bloomberg have not produced any public findings or charges.

Based on reporting from: Bloomberg · 13 October 2026; Financial Times · trading volume calculation; CFTC · Testimony of Chairman Michael S. Selig before the House Committee on Agriculture · 16 April 2026; Senators Warren and Whitehouse · Letter to the CFTC on oil futures trading · 9 April 2026; Senator Warnock and colleagues · Letter to the CFTC · 27 May 2026; Code of Federal Regulations · 17 CFR 180.1.