By Dan McCue

CHARLESTON -- Wasting no time, U.S. District Judge David C. Norton on Tuesday afternoon granted a Securities and Exchange Commission request to partially lift the stay he placed on further lawsuits relating to the Al Parish fraud case.

The SEC made the request to allow the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission to weigh in with litigation.

However, Norton’s lifting of the stay for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission only applied to a single federal complaint, and did not open the door for further litigation by Parish’s investors.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is an independent agency of the federal government charged with protecting investors in the nation’s commodities markets from fraud, manipulation and abusive practices related to the sale of commodity and financial futures and options.

Although there is some overlap in the jurisdiction of the SEC and the trading commission, the latter agency has a very specific interest in the case due to Parish’s having operated “commodity pools” as part of his investment business.

Parish currently faces one federal criminal charge and six civil charges stemming from his handling of investors’ funds in several informal investment pools he operated through Parish Economics LLC, Summerville Hard Assets LLC and Battery Wealth Management.

Investigators have left open the possibility that additional federal charges may be forthcoming. The U.S. Department of Justice has 24 more days to take the first charge—lying to the SEC and providing it with false documents—to a grand jury to seek an indictment.

Under federal procedure, other criminal charges can be filed as the investigation progresses and don’t necessarily have to be filed within the indictment window for the original charge.

The suit filed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Tuesday accuses Parish of violating the Commodity Exchange Act by deliberately misrepresenting the size of the futures pool he operated, providing investors in the commodity pool with false periodic statements on the fund’s performance and about the amount of their money that actually was invested in futures and other derivatives.

The suit seeks civil penalties, restitution to the futures pool participants, disgorgement of Parish’s alleged ill-gotten gains and a permanent ban on Parish from trading in commodities in the future.

Hays Financial Consulting, the court-appointed receiver in the SEC’s civil action against economist Al Parish, is continuing to provide updates on the case for investors on its Web site. The receiver can also be reached at (404) 926-0059.