Trump administration orders CFTC to withdraw report on suspicious oil futures trades

On March 23, a group of traders placed billions of dollars in oil futures bets during a brief two-minute interval at 6:49 a.m., anticipating a drop in oil prices that would follow a headline-driven market sell-off. The timing matched President Trump's decision not to strike Iranian power plants later that day, prompting the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to label the trades suspicious and refer them to its Division of Enforcement.

According to unnamed sources, Mel Gunewardena, an adviser to CFTC chair Michael Selig, instructed a market-oversight supervisor to retract the referral, a step that agency veterans say has never been done before. The oversight team was reportedly unsure how to proceed, fearing that procedural safeguards could be undermined. Gunewardena, a former Goldman Sachs and State Street executive, had recently taken on the role of head of the Office of International Affairs and senior markets adviser to the chair. The incident occurs as the administration seeks to position the CFTC as the primary regulator of emerging prediction-market platforms, raising concerns about political interference in market oversight.