`Fines Against Olive Oil Futures Market Revealed - Olive Oil Times

Fines Against Olive Oil Futures Market Revealed

By Julie Butler
Jun. 17, 2014 08:27 UTC

Serious breaches, includ­ing mar­ket manip­u­la­tion, by the Jaén-based Olive Oil Futures Market were revealed today in a Spanish gov­ern­ment bul­letin.

It said both the mar­ket (MFAO for its ini­tials in Spanish) and then direc­tor gen­eral José Luis Alonso Fernández, were fined a total of about €70,000 ($95,000) over the breaches, which took place sev­eral years ago. Publication of details of the penal­ties was approved in a res­o­lu­tion by the CNMV, the agency over­see­ing the Spanish stock mar­ket, just last month.

According to the gov­ern­ment bul­letin (BOE), on October 3, 2012, the CNMV imposed a €15,000 fine against the MFAO and €20,000 against Alonso for prac­tices of mar­ket manip­u­la­tion between February 2009 and November 2010 that pro­vided false or mis­lead­ing sig­nals regard­ing sup­ply, demand or price.

And on July 9 last year, it imposed fines of the same amounts against both for not merely occa­sional or iso­lated” breaches of rules gov­ern­ing the MFAO.

According to Spanish olive oil pub­li­ca­tion Olimerca, Manuel León, pres­i­dent of the Jaén-based mar­ket, said the MFAO’s gov­ern­ing body had coop­er­ated fully with the CNMV from the moment it became aware of the prac­tices and also opened its own line of inves­ti­ga­tion. Alonso ceased being direc­tor gen­eral at the end of 2010 and all the fines had been set­tled last September.

Leon said Alonso’s actions did not cause harm to any client or oper­a­tor in the MFAO, and the irreg­u­lar oper­a­tions formed just 5 – 6 per­cent of the total vol­ume of con­tracts in the mar­ket, Olimerca reported.


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