A commodity broker last year 36 million ASV dollars worth of copper instead of someone Turkey supplier received painted stones, writes BBC.
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The Geneva company Mercuria Energy Group has stated that it has fallen victim to fraud by receiving 10 thousand tons of “counterfeit” copper.
Last year, the company agreed to purchase copper billets with delivery to China. About 6,000 tons of copper were stacked in more than 300 containers and transported by eight ships.
However, shortly before the start of his voyage in the port of Istanbul, it was exchanged for painted stones reminiscent of this metal.
To address the situation, Mercuria, one of the world’s five largest oil brokers, has now turned to Turkey and British in the courts against the copper supplier Bietsan Bakir. Turkish police have detained several people in connection with a copper fraud scheme.
“Detainees suspected of organizing a fraud case have been detained,” Mercuria said in a statement.
The Istanbul law firm KYB explained in a statement to the media that the copper was initially placed in containers before the necessary inspections were carried out and that security seals were placed on them to prevent fraud. But then the containers opened and the copper was replaced with painted stones. Fraudsters exchanged seals to rule out suspicions that the containers were then opened.
When the ships sailed, Mercuria paid the supplier $ 36 million for five cargoes, and the fraud was not detected until the ships arrived in a Chinese port.
This is not the end of a series of failures. Normally, in cases where the goods are not delivered, the consignee could turn to the supplier’s insurer, but Mercuria has found that only one of the seven insurance contracts submitted by the Turkish company was genuine and the others counterfeit.
Bietsan Bakir has not answered questions from Reuters journalists.
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