The Romanian National Securities Commission suspects money laundering on the derivatives market

• Trading in the EUR/USD and SIBGOLD_USD contracts, suspended indefinitely

The overseer of the capital market yesterday alerted against some "atypical trading patterns on the derivatives market", which are likely to be considered as manipulative transactions, a notice posted on the website of the Romanian National Securities Commission (CNVM).

The Commission mentions that it has investigated the matter, and has uncovered the methods used for those trades, which were logical from an economic point of view (buying at low prices and selling at high prices), followed by the placing of orders which made no sense from an economic point of view (selling at low prices and buying at high prices).

The CNVM suspects that this kind of transactions facilitates money laundering.

According to the Romanian National Securities Commission, the trades which have been investigated concerned illiquid financial instruments, and the prices at which they were concluded were abnormal when compared to the market conditions.

The alert of the Romanian National Securities Commission coincided with the indefinite suspension of trading in the EUR/USD and SIBGOLD_USD contracts on the Sibiu Exchange. The decision to suspend them was made by the Board of Directors of Sibex, made on July 22nd, according to the communiqué posted yesterday on the website of the institution. The communiqué does not mention the reason which caused the suspension of the two contracts.

The alert sent yesterday comes about a month and a half after the Romanian National Securities Commission sent Emilian Popescu-Moscu, former general inspector on the Rasdaq, to the Bucharest Stock Exchange, for a period of two months, to oversee the exchange"s compliance with the capital market legislation in effect, together with a control team which ended its mission on June 20.