CFTC commissioner calls for agency to require more admissions of guilt

A Democratic commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) would like the agency to stop offering no-fault settlements as a matter of routine but instead force more individuals and corporations to accept responsibility for their wrongdoing.

Christy Goldsmith Romero, a former federal law enforcement official who joined the CFTC in March, called on the commission to consider using a test to “identify those cases calling for greater public accountability and transparency—where the CFTC should send a message about the paramount importance and strength of our enforcement program.”

Goldsmith Romero called for the CFTC to use a “Heightened Enforcement Accountability and Transparency” (HEAT) test that would “require more defendants to admit wrongdoing in CFTC enforcement settlements,” she said in a statement issued Monday.