A former UBS Group AG precious metals trader was found not guilty on Wednesday of scheming to manipulate futures markets through a practice known as spoofing.

The former trader initially faced six additional charges of commodities fraud and substantive spoofing, but those counts were thrown out by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Meyer, who found they should’ve been brought in Chicago where the alleged illegal trades were executed.

Prosecuting banks and traders for price manipulation on COMEX futures while ignoring the far larger London market and its gold and silver fixings looks like a job half done. Trading desks and their traders are agnostic to trading venues and with interlinked markets, the COMEX and the London Fixings are two sides of the same coin.

With blatant evidence that the same banks and traders were involved in both markets, and with actual chat room transcripts now confirming that precious metals traders across multiple banks were colluding in fixing price manipulation, then why are their no active regulatory investigations of trader manipulation of the London Gold and Silver Fixings?

Is it because of lack of jurisdictional authority or are the regulators and criminal enforcement agencies such as the FCA, DoJ, FINMA and the German BAFIN too terrified of opening a can of worms into the huge liabilities that would arise from proving a decade long criminal manipulation of the London Gold and Silver price benchmarks and that were used throughout the world the value everything from ISDA contracts to institutional precious metals products, to ETFs.

Following news of the charging of five precious metals traders and three banks in January, Commodities Futures Trading Commission and Department of Justice documents reveal a global criminal cabal of 16 traders operating in at least four major financial institutions between 2008 and 2015 to defraud COMEX gold and silver futures markets.

How central banks' use gold lending to manipulate their balance sheets, and also to manipulate the broader market for precious metals by sheer dint of their size, and willingness to buy and sell without any consideration for the price.

DB, HSBC & UBS all guilty of manipulating PM prices.

What has been claimed & denied by many has now become truth....

Trades that moved about 4 million ounces of gold in a matter of minutes awakened the precious metal from its slumber.

After 11:10 a.m. on the Comex in New York almost 40,000 contracts, each representing 100 ounces of the metal, traded in a span of 10 minutes. That triggered a sell-off, sending prices down as much as 1.1 percent.

A former trader at UBS Group AG was charged with conspiracy and fraud over his suspected role in manipulating the price of precious metals.

Andre Flotron, who worked at the bank in Switzerland and Stamford, Connecticut, is the second person publicly charged in the U.S. investigation into the fixing of gold, silver, platinum and palladium prices. Flotron, a Swiss citizen, was arrested while visiting his girlfriend in New Jersey. He was charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, commodities fraud and spoofing. He faces as many as 25 years in prison on the most serious charge.

However, it was the precious metals 'markets' that went a little turbo. At 1906ET, Silver futures flash-smashed higher, running the day's high-stops, before plunging back to earth...

This would normally be shrugged off as just another example of the utter farce that global capital markets have become. However, a glance back in recent history at the silver market's most recent chaos moment - on July 6th - and a 'funny' thing stood out!!!

“All fundamental factors aside, it does tremendous technical damage to the market,”

“There should be some effort to study this and come to some solution that will make for a more orderly trading pattern. This type of activity is not good for a fair playing field.”

The precious metal struggled to bounce back from its low on June 26 because the transaction pushed the price below the 200-day moving average, triggering automated sell orders set by algorithmic traders, thereby sustaining the slump.

Many analysts are calling the flash crash a ‘trading error’ or fat finger.’ However, this is somewhat lazy and ignores a few pertinent facts and context.

The aggressive selling had all the hallmarks of market manipulation as $450 million worth of silver futures were sold in a minute. An entity appears to have wanted silver lower and the massive sell order achieved that goal.