
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 26, 1990                   TAG: 9005260218
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EX-MERCANTILE CHAIRMAN BANNED, FINED $500,000

In one of the harshest penalties ever meted out by federal futures market regulators, a prominent industry leader and former Chicago Mercantile Exchange Chairman, Brian Monieson, was fined $500,000 Friday and banned from the futures business for allowing customers to be cheated.

Administrative law judge George Painter of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission revoked the futures trading registrations of both Monieson and the firm he heads, GNP Commodities Inc. The firm also was fined $500,000.

Painter also revoked the registrations of former GNP brokers Ira Greenspon and Norman Furlett and fined each of them $75,000.

Revoking the registration of a commodity trader or firm is the strongest action the CFTC can take because it effectively bans them from the business for at least 10 years, said CFTC enforcement director Dennis Klejna. The $1 million in fines against Monieson and his firm add up to the biggest monetary penalty ever imposed by a CFTC judge.

Monieson said he would appeal the judges ruling to the five-member futures commission and, if necessary, the federal courts.

Monieson and his firm are major players in the Chicago futures markets, which in the last decade have transformed themselves from markets for farm crops into one of the world's major financial markets. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange and its rival Chicago Board of Trade have applied the principle of selling commodities at today's price for future delivery to everything from stocks, bonds and foreign currencies to insurance policies.

The CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission are in the midst of a bureaucratic turf war over which of the agencies will regulate trading in stock index futures - contracts to buy and sell packages of stocks at a future date at prices set today.

Supporters of the SEC have charged that the CFTC has been too lax in its regulation of the futures industry, and has allowed trading in stock index futures in Chicago to become so speculative that it has caused dangerous and unnecessary volatility in the price of the stock markets in New York and elsewhere.

by CNB