EXCLUSIVE U.S. Justice Department probes suspected manipulation of Platts benchmarks -sources – Reuters

EXCLUSIVE U.S. Justice Department probes suspected manipulation of Platts benchmarks -sources – Reuters

WASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating suspected manipulation of energy pricing benchmarks published by S&P Global Platts, expanding the agency's crackdown on misconduct in the global commodities market, according to four people familiar with the matter.

London-based Platts is a data and news provider which focuses on energy, metal and agricultural commodities. The company collects data from traders on their deal prices to determine a daily market price for a number of physical commodities.

U.S. prosecutors are probing suspected manipulative behavior by individual traders when submitting those deal prices to Platts' price assessments for oil and other energy benchmarks, the four people said, without specifying which ones.