On 19 May 2026, the CFTC Division of Enforcement issued CFTC Staff Letter No. 26-15, an advisory superseding all prior policies on self-reporting, cooperation, and remediation, including the February 2025 enforcement advisory. The advisory is immediately effective and establishes the Division's exclusive framework for evaluating cooperation in enforcement matters.
The policy operates under the Commodity Exchange Act and sets five conjunctive conditions for a full declination: (1) the party made a Voluntary Self-Report to the CFTC before the Division opened an investigation or indicated it would; (2) the party provided Full Cooperation throughout the investigation; (3) the party effected Timely and Appropriate Remediation of the misconduct; (4) the party provided Full Restitution and/or Disgorgement where applicable; and (5) no aggravating circumstances preclude eligibility. For parties who cooperate but do not qualify for declination, the Division may reduce penalties by up to 75 percent. The prior mitigation credit matrix has been eliminated in favour of this binary declination framework.
Commodity pool operators, commodity trading advisors, swap dealers, digital asset exchanges, and other CFTC-registered entities now face a binary self-report decision under the new policy. A qualifying voluntary disclosure before any investigation opens the declination path; late or investigation-prompted disclosure provides only discretionary penalty credit. Digital asset platforms and DeFi protocols operating under CFTC jurisdiction must weigh the cost of immediate voluntary disclosure against the litigation risk of proceeding to investigation, where penalty reductions remain available but declination is foreclosed.
The advisory does not define aggravating circumstances exhaustively, leaving the Division discretion to deny declination even where all five conditions are met. Prior misconduct, severity of market impact, and recidivism are factors the Division has historically weighed as aggravating. The policy creates no safe harbour against parallel proceedings by the Department of Justice, the SEC, or FinCEN, and entities with multi-agency exposure must calibrate disclosure timing across each regulator separately.
Licentium advises regulated entities on CFTC compliance, voluntary disclosure strategy, and enforcement response in the digital asset sector. Work we undertake includes self-reporting eligibility assessments, cooperation program design, remediation planning, penalty exposure analysis, and CFTC examination preparation.
Source: CFTC Staff Letter No. 26-15, Release No. 9234-26, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 19 May 2026