Trading Houses Pull Away
Vitol Group and Cargill Inc. have ended their relationship with Radiant World, a privately owned company that is now among the largest iron ore traders globally. Glencore Plc has also stopped taking on new deals with the company.
People with knowledge of the situation say two of the trading houses reviewed paperwork supplied by Radiant World to its lenders and found the documents to be invalid. The remaining firm stepped away after its traders heard from industry contacts about suspected forged documents and deemed the allegations credible.
Radiant World is owned by 45-year-old Pinkesh Nahar. Its lawyers said the company's turnover is about $12 billion. It grew out of an Indian iron-ore trading base into a worldwide organization with offices from Singapore to Geneva, relying on credit from scores of banks and trading partners.
Bank Financing and Legal Response
One confirmed case involved Radiant World using invoices for iron ore deals with Vitol as collateral to obtain financing from Intesa Sanpaolo. When the bank contacted Vitol to verify the invoices, Vitol said certain trades behind them were not real.
Intesa Sanpaolo said: "The matter regards an exposure of around €200 million, prudentially and largely covered, with no impact on Intesa Sanpaolo's 2026 expected net income." It has set aside a provision for the exposure.
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Radiant World responded: "These accusations are categorically untrue. Radiant World's trading relationships are healthy and uninterrupted."
A spokesperson for Radiant World gave Bloomberg records of what he described as current transactions with Vitol, Cargill, and Glencore. Those records were inaccurate, according to people with knowledge of the situation; they said the contract numbers did not match any genuine deal between Radiant World and the named companies.
Vitol and Cargill have not traded with Radiant World in months, the people said.
Point Bonita Review and Prior Red Flags
The Point Bonita fund, which is run by Jefferies Financial Group Inc., has also begun reviewing its Radiant World arrangements. Point Bonita had already suffered separate losses tied to the failure of First Brands Group. In its review, the fund has found inconsistencies in certain financing documents after checking with Radiant World trading partners, including Glencore, according to a person familiar with the process. The same person said Jefferies currently thinks the actual commodity transactions are legitimate.
In its latest quarterly filing, Jefferies said it manages Point Bonita and holds a 5.9% stake in the fund. The fund's current exposure to Radiant World is below $300 million, according to one person with knowledge of the situation.
Radiant World's legal representatives said in a letter: "No concerns have been raised about our client's lending facilities by our client's lenders, including with Intesa Sanpaolo, Jefferies or the Point Bonita fund." They added: "Our client is a responsible trading company and takes its trading and legal obligations very seriously. "Any suggestion that our client has engaged in fraudulent trading, or has relied upon fabricated trading records to secure lending would be false"."
Representatives for Vitol, Glencore, Cargill, and Jefferies chose not to comment.
Industry Background
Concerns about paperwork tied to Radiant World's trades go back further. Bloomberg reported last year that an internal probe at Cooperatieve Rabobank UA had concluded the company was involved in several transactions using falsified bills of lading, and that the bank in early 2020 stopped extending credit to Radiant World. Radiant World responded then that it knew nothing about the probe and had never faced investigation or prosecution by regulators.
Trade invoices, shipping receipts, and similar paperwork are widely used as collateral for commodity-trading loans. Lenders are often willing to accept smaller firms' invoices for goods sold to big, creditworthy buyers, making such financing easier to obtain. Radiant World's rise has been fueled by bank and credit-fund lines totaling several hundred million dollars, much of it secured by trade paperwork. Bloomberg also reported last year that Glencore regularly had a financial position tied to Radiant World that reached into nine figures and assigned a special team to keep track of it.
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