How Citigroup Helped Lift the Lid on Trafigura’s Nickel Nightmare

When it raised the issue with Gupta, he acknowledged as much, according to a court filing. The businessman told Trafigura that the cargoes might actually contain less-valuable nickel alloy rather than pure nickel, and explained the discrepancy as “an effort to avoid a ban on shipping nickel of Russian origin,” the court filing shows. (There are no international sanctions preventing the shipping of Russian nickel, though some banks refuse to finance it.) On Nov. 15, he told Trafigura that its containers actually held 20,000 tons of nickel alloy and 5,000 tons of “other materials.”