Defendant LIEW's employer, Bank A, was one of the largest global banking and financial services companies in the world. Bank A's primary precious metals trading desks were located in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Defendant LIEW and other precious metals traders, including traders at Bank A, engaged in a conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution and spoofing, in the trading of precious metals futures contracts traded on the CME.

Defendant LIEW placed, and conspired to place, hundreds of orders to buy or to sell precious metals futures contracts that he intended to cancel and not to execute at the time he placed the orders (the "Spoof Orders").

Is there gold price manipulation going on? Absolutely. There’s no question about it. That’s not just an opinion.

There is statistical evidence piling up to make the case, in addition to anecdotal evidence and forensic evidence. The evidence is very clear, in fact.

Simple economics tells us that markets and prices are driven by demand and supply. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case in the silver market. However, the threat of new regulations may be putting a stop to some bullion banks from fiddling the London silver benchmark.

A U.S. judge on Tuesday significantly narrowed private litigation accusing several big banks and German chemical giant BASF SE (BASFn.DE) of conspiring to suppress platinum and palladium prices.

US Appeals Court overturns Dismissal in Silver Rigging Case against JPMorgan
The Appeals court rejected Judge Engelmeyer’s claim that the plaintiffs did not prove JPMorgan made “uneconomic bids” in the silver forward’s markets.
New Discovery May Win the Case for against JPMorgan

Now that the cat is out of the bag and Deutsche Bank has agreed to turn over documents implicating other banks in related schemes, major mining companies are preparing lawsuits of their own. Straight-shooting First Majestic Silver CEO Keith Neumeyer, who in 2015 was the first mining company head to issue a public statement on the manipulation of precious metals prices by a small concentration of players, has said that the company’s legal team is closely monitoring the situation

Citing loss of revenue, jobs and shareholder value Neumeyer said in an interview with SGT Report that his company will likely be preparing legal action against the bullion banks involved in the rigging of prices.

The Amended Complaint against several major bullion banks wherein it is argued that said banks colluded to manipulate the London Gold Fix was unsealed last week. It is a convincing document, and damning of the Defendants. Most galling is the disclosure of chat transcripts amongst traders, exchanges they surely thought would never see the light of day. Choice examples to follow.

This is a touchy subject amongst gold investors, some of whom believe the price is set in Davos every year, and others who refuse to have anything to do with those who believe the price is set in Davos every year. We are agnostic on the topic, but will say that muscle and its enlistment is a fact of life in all markets. However, one thing we do know, having reviewed the Complaint, is that the organizations the gold mining industry depends upon to market its metal did not have their clients’ best interests in mind. This may still be the case. Perhaps a gold mining company (or two) will read this note and if they do, by the time they are done, they may well think that there may be a better way to get their product into the hands of the people who want it.

Last week ZeroHedge reported on the amended London Silver Fixing Antitrust Litigation which included damaging chat logs provided by Deutsche Bank that reveal collusion between bullion bank traders to “shade”, “blade”, “muscle”, “job”, “spoof” and “snipe” the silver market.

While the amended complaint only provides selected examples from the 350,000 pages of documents and 75 audio tapes that the plaintiffs received as part of the settlement with Deutsche Bank, what has been provided shows cliques of traders who worked together against the interests of their clients.

Below is a network map of these cliques, which shows every trader mentioned in the complaint with the lines indicating who chatted with whom (view the map online here).

For years, Mike Maloney has talked about how precious metals markets were being manipulated and today we have the proof. Deutsche Bank recently settled a lawsuit accusing it of the rigging silver markets. And as part of the settlement, the bank released 350,000 pages of documents and 75 audio tapes.

These documents show there was a silver market “mafia” of big banks including Deutsche, UBS, and HSBC all working together to artificially suppress the price of silver and fleece the general public in the process.

In this video, Mike walks you through the historical silver charts and pinpoints the exact moments bank traders colluded together to rig the markets. The evidence leaves little to doubt. But as you’ll learn, there’s an upside for silver investors who accumulate physical metals.

The new evidence is derived from 350,000 pages of bank documents and 75 audio tapes handed over by Deutsche Bank as part of the accord. The traders aren’t identified by name in the filings.

The recorded chats sprinkled with “dude,” “bro,’’ and assorted obscenities are a “smoking gun” bolstering claims that traders rigged silver prices, impacting jewelry prices, silver investments and the earnings of mining companies that sell raw materials to refiners, the plaintiffs say. The traders acted against their own clients’ interest, triggering stop-loss orders and front-running customers trades, according to the documents.

They also gave code names to certain techniques, according to the documents, which explain that “blade” meant placing a series of small orders close to each other in price, and “muscle” referred to placing large orders -- usually when they knew the market was illiquid.