Members accuse A'bad comex board of price manipulation

Over 250 registered members of the Ahmedabad Commodity Exchange (ACE) have gone on a two-day strike since Friday alleging irregularities by its board of directors. Members claimed that ACE had been quoting wrong spot prices for years on the behest of board directors, resulting in huge losses to many traders.

“Spot prices have been wrongly quoted to suit directors’ futures contract positions, and this has resulted in huge losses for traders as well as hedgers,” said Jayesh Shah, member and former director of ACE. “We have been opposing these practices for years. Many members have written to the ACE board and also to the Forwards Markets Commission (FMC). But no steps have been taken so far,” Shah said.

“As a last resort, we decided to go on strike,” Shah said. Citing an instance, he said that on December 15, ACE had reported spot prices of castor seed at Rs 476 per 20 kg, Rs 454 on the next day and Rs 470 a day after. “Such a sharp fluctuation in castor seed spot prices in a very short duration is not possible. It has not been reported ever in the history of castor seed trade,” Shah said.

This was done to favour some board members, who had interests in arbitrage, he said.