Trafigura accuses Gupta of weaving incoherent web to cover USD600m nickel fraud

LONDON: Trafigura lawyers said Prateek Gupta’s allegations that the group concocted a secret scheme to swap expensive nickel for low-value metals were full of inconsistencies, as the Indian businessman gave evidence in a long-running fraud case on Wednesday.

Switzerland-based commodity trader Trafigura sued Gupta over two years ago, alleging he was the mastermind of a scam in which he and his companies agreed to provide pure nickel but delivered steel or scrap instead.

That large quantity of pure nickel, worth about USD625 million at the time, would be difficult to source and also prove problematic in terms of credit insurance limits, Gupta said

Gupta has countered that staff at Trafigura themselves devised the scheme at the centre of the case, an allegation Trafigura has repeatedly denied.

Testifying for the first time, Gupta said he believed that the substitution scheme had the approval of top Trafigura executives.

“You are lying,” Trafigura lawyer Nathan Pillow said in the London High Court trial. “Why would it need to be kept secret if it was approved at the highest levels?”

Gupta, testifying remotely from Dubai where he lives, replied that only a small group was to discuss how the scheme would operate.

Pillow also queried why Gupta said the material to be substituted should resemble nickel, but also proposed including stainless steel, which bore little likeness to nickel.