The U.S. Justice Department is investigating a series of oil market trades made shortly before dramatic announcements by U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian officials about the war, trades that generated massive profits totaling $2.6 billion, ABC News reported Thursday afternoon.
According to the report, which is based on several anonymous sources, the investigation is being conducted jointly by the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an independent federal agency. Investigators are examining at least four separate transactions in which traders bet that oil prices would fall just before they actually did. U.S. authorities have not issued any official statement on the investigation.
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US investigates huge oil market gamble surrounding war with Iran
(Photos: Alex Brandon/AP, Shutterstock)
According to ABC, the information on the trades came from the operator of the London Stock Exchange. In the first transaction, on March 23 — 15 minutes before Trump announced that he was postponing attacks he had threatened to carry out against Iran’s power plants — traders bet more than $500 million that oil prices would fall. The second case occurred April 7, hours before Trump announced a temporary ceasefire, when traders bet $960 million that oil prices would decline.
On April 17, 20 minutes before Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on social media that the Strait of Hormuz had reopened to ship traffic — a decision reversed the next day by the Revolutionary Guards — traders bet $760 million that oil prices would fall. On April 21, 15 minutes before Trump announced an extension of the ceasefire, this time without a deadline, traders made a series of bets totaling $430 million that oil prices would fall.
The report on the series of bets comes amid concerns that have already emerged in recent weeks about leaks of classified information used to make large sums on betting platforms, including Polymarket, around the war with Iran and other world events.
Late last month, for example, it was revealed that a U.S. special forces soldier who took part in planning and carrying out the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January was arrested and accused of betting on the military operation on Polymarket — winning $400,000. According to the indictment filed against the soldier, an officer named Gannon Ken Van Dyke, he bet $32,000 in late December that Maduro would be “out” by January — a wager then considered unlikely to succeed.