Energy trader Vitol Inc paying $6 million to settle charges of misleading exchange

Vitol Inc paying $6M in settlement

WASHINGTON — An energy trading firm has agreed to pay a $6 million fine to settle federal regulators’ charges of misleading an exchange by failing to disclose facts concerning its relationship with a subsidiary.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which announced the settlement Tuesday, said the withholding of information by Houston-based Vitol Inc. and Vitol Capital Management Ltd. caused the New York Mercantile Exchange to fail to add their market positions together. Combining their positions would have put the firms over the exchange’s limits, the CFTC said.

The two firms neither admitted nor denied the charges. Vitol Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of Vitol SA, a privately held company based in Geneva, Switzerland, that is one of the world’s biggest energy traders.