From the FT:
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission first announced that it was investigating “complaints of misconduct in the silver market” in September 2008, following a barrage of allegations of manipulation from a group of precious metals investors.
In 2010, Bart Chilton, a CFTC commissioner, said that he believed there had been “fraudulent efforts” to “deviously control” the silver price.
But after taking advice from two external consultancies, the first of which found irregularities on certain trading dates that it believed deserved more analysis, CFTC staff do not have sufficient evidence to bring a case, according to the people familiar with the situation.
The CFTC has analysed over 100,000 documents and interviewed dozens of witnesses since it began investigating the market in 2008, it said last year. The people familiar with the situation said the evidence included records from JPMorgan.
The conclusion of the investigation will come as a relief to JPMorgan. Although no company or individual was named in the CFTC investigation, the Wall Street bank has suffered a torrent of allegations from silver investors on the blogosphere.
The FT continues by referencing the inventor of CDS herself: Blythe Masters:
Blythe Masters, head of commodities at JPMorgan, in an April interview with CNBC conceded that there had been “a tremendous amount of speculation, particularly in the blogosphere, about this topic”, but maintained that the bank had no large bets on silver prices.
“We have no stake in whether prices rise or decline,” she said. JPMorgan declined to comment on the CFTC investigation.