The world dealer Trafigura lets itself be cheated on nickel by an Indian entrepreneur
Bloomberg reports that the nickel market has been rocked again: One of the world's largest commodity traders, Trafigura Group, is facing losses of more than half a billion dollars after discovering that the batches of the metal it bought didn't contain the metal they were supposed to. to contain.
The commodities trading giant posted a $577 million writedown as a result of the fraud and fired the group's nickel and cobalt trading head, Socrates Economou, even though the company clarified it was a fraud. systematically committed against it by an outside party and does not believe that anyone from the company was complicit in the fraud.
Trafigura said in a statement that it has initiated legal action against Indian businessman Prateek Gupta and several companies related to him, including TMT Metals and subsidiaries of UD Trading Group. “Since the end of December 2022, a small fraction of the containers purchased by these companies have been inspected upon arrival at their destination and found to be nickel-free,” Trafigura said. “Most shipments remain in transit pending further inspections.”
This is yet another black spot for the metal trading industry, which in recent years has been plagued by stories of fake warehouse receipts, duplicate shipping documents and containers full of painted stones.
Finally, Bloomberg reports that nickel is a popular metal among scammers. Its high value means that a single full container can be worth $500,000, yet it is traded in relatively large volumes and without the rigid security that accompanies shipments of precious metals such as gold.
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The article The world dealer Trafigura lets himself be cheated on nickel by an Indian businessman comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-dealer-mondiale-trafigura-si-lascia-fregare-sul-nichel-da-in-imprenditore-indiano/ on Sun, 12 Feb 2023 08:00:48 +0000.