Business

Traders Bet Big Minutes Before Trump’s Iran Post. Then A Top Regulator’s Adviser Reportedly Stepped In

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A top adviser to the commodities regulator’s chairman told career staff to retract a referral over possible insider trading in oil bets, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

Analysts in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Division of Market Oversight referred trades made around President Donald Trump’s March 23 reversal on Iran to the agency’s enforcement division, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Mel Gunewardena, a senior adviser to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, then told a supervisor to retract the referral, according to the outlet.

In a two-minute window starting at 6:49 a.m. on March 23, traders sold contracts equal to at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude, more than 8.5 times the volume traded at that time of morning over the prior week, Bloomberg reported. About 15 minutes later, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was backing off his threat to strike Iranian power plants, and Brent prices fell as much as 14%.

The Justice Department and the offices of Republican Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

“The CFTC does not confirm or deny any investigation,” CFTC spokesperson Zach Fulton said in a statement to the DCNF.

“The fact that this trading preceded a headline driven sell-off means that either someone got very lucky or knew something,” Tim Skirrow, head of derivatives at Energy Aspects, told Bloomberg.

Gunewardena later assembled his own team to conduct a new analysis of the trading, and by July the supervisor he had told to retract the referral had left the agency, Bloomberg reported. Other members of the team resigned or were moved to other roles, though it is not clear whether the changes were related, according to the outlet.

An agency official told Bloomberg that because the original findings were U.S.-focused, the agency decided to broaden the review internationally, a task Gunewardena, a former Goldman Sachs and State Street executive, was best placed to lead.

“Conspicuously large and consistently prescient trades should always be subject to oversight and review since all market participants must play by the same rules,” EJ Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Economic Policy Studies, said in a statement to the DCNF. “Abandoning that principle shakes confidence in our commodity and financial markets, which are the best in the world.”

“In this instance, it seems that a comprehensive review of both national and international actors would be most appropriate. Sunlight is, after all, the best disinfectant,” Antoni said.

“With high oil and gas prices busting the budgets of so many hardworking Americans, the CFTC should prioritize policing oil markets to protect Americans’ wallets and pocketbooks,” Dennis Kelleher, co-founder, president and CEO of Better Markets, said in a statement to the DCNF.

“The CFTC has enormous power and authority to go after wrongdoers and lawbreakers in the oil markets,” Kelleher said.

He added that the agency should publicly disclose all related documents, that its inspector general should “begin an immediate investigation” and that “the Department of Justice should also commence a criminal investigation.”

The CFTC’s enforcement division is still examining the trading, with a focus on March 23, the official said. The Justice Department has opened a parallel investigation, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg earlier this year.

The CFTC has an extensive and ongoing investigation into suspicious oil trades that began in late March, and all entities and names referred to its enforcement team are under investigation, according to a source familiar with the matter. The source called reporting to the contrary “false and malicious.”

Warren and Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island asked Selig in April to investigate the March 23 trades and an approximately $950 million bet on falling oil prices placed hours before Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran on April 7.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and four Democratic colleagues pressed the CFTC in May for a public update on whether manipulation or misuse of nonpublic information had occurred.

The CFTC brought 13 enforcement actions in fiscal 2025, down from 58 in 2024 and 96 in 2023, according to agency data cited by Bloomberg.