ForbesFailed hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC and two traders are rebutting government allegations that they manipulated natural gas markets last year.
In hundreds of pages of briefs filed late Friday with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Amaranth and former energy traders Brian Hunter and Matthew Donohoe denied any wrongdoing and challenged the agency’s authority to bring the case.
The hedge fund and two traders face $291 million in penalties in FERC’s first prosecution of energy-market manipulation under authority Congress gave it two years ago.
Lawyers for Hunter, the hedge fund’s former chief energy trader, wrote that there is “no evidence or even allegation that Amaranth’s trades were in any way fictitious or deceptive” and said there is no evidence that energy futures contracts were “sold at anything other than prevailing prices.”
