Ritchie Torres calls for probe into trades ahead of March Iran news
Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York, during an interview on Tuesday, January 28, 2025, in New York, USA.
Victor J. Blue | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Rep. Ritchie Torres on Wednesday called for a federal investigation into suspicious trading activity in oil and stock futures markets, just before President Donald Trump announced a five-day delay in attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure in March.
In a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig, first reported by CNBC, Torres cites reports of a series of erratic and well-timed trades in the minutes before Trump called for a pause in hostilities.
“What kind of trader would place a massive trade at 6:49 a.m., 15 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement, with billions of dollars at stake and without any protection?” Torres said in an interview on Wednesday. “The only reasonable answer to this question is an insider trader. Any other alternative is statistically impossible.”
More than $500 million in crude oil futures were traded in about 15 minutes before Trump announced he would halt the strikes via Truth Social, Reuters reported last month. The New Yorker reported Just ahead of Trump’s announcement, there was an abnormal increase in futures trading volume, predicting a decline in oil prices and a rebound in stock markets.
In his letter, Torres said “this incident may constitute one of the largest examples of insider trading in history” and called on the SEC to launch a formal investigation and obtain comprehensive trading records in consultation with the CFTC.
A spokesperson for the SEC on Wednesday declined to comment. The CFTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The SEC has appointed Gibson Dunn lawyer and former agency official David Woodcock as its next enforcement director, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
“I don’t have confidence in our market regulators,” Torres said in the interview. “But we have no choice but to agitate for accountability. We cannot allow the SEC and CFTC to ignore what may be the largest insider trading case in history.”
This is the second time in as many months that Torres, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, has raised the issue of potential insider trading around the Trump administration’s actions.
Torres introduced the legislation in January after an account on the prediction market platform Polymarket placed a well-timed bet in the hours before the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. $400,000 payment.
The legislation would prohibit federal elected officials, congressional staff, political appointees and executive branch officials from buying or selling event contracts based on government policy, action or political outcomes if they have material non-public information. Yes 42 Democratic co-sponsors However, it seems unlikely that it will pass the Republican-controlled House.
Congressional Democrats have repeatedly expressed concern in recent months about the emergence of insider trading within the Trump administration, particularly in prediction markets. On Monday, a group of House Democrats sent a letter to Selig questioning the CFTC’s role in regulating event betting placed on offshore prediction markets like Polymarket.
“Recent high-profile examples of insider trading on prediction market platforms regarding U.S. government actions, including the military’s intervention in Venezuela and our recent attack on Iran, have raised concerns that the CFTC does not have adequate control over these fast-growing markets,” the group, led by Reps. Seth Moulton and Jim McGovern, Massachusetts Democrats, wrote.
