A court document filed by Trafigura for Friday's hearing argued that the freezing order should be extended and said that the trader had agreed with Gupta's lawyers on an April 6 deadline for challenging the order.
A source with knowledge of the situation said the freezing order was extended on Friday, but did not say for how long. In court papers submitted previously, the Geneva-based trader had said it began to suspect in October last year that around 25,000 tonnes of metal sold by Gupta's firms may not be high-grade nickel, and began inspecting more than 1,000 shipping containers. Earlier in February, Trafigura told the judge in a closed-door hearing that some of the first containers inspected were found to contain carbon steel, which is worth a fraction of the price of nickel. The court papers for Friday's hearing also said Trafigura had obtained freezing and disclosure orders against defendants in local courts in the Cayman Islands, Singapore and Malaysia.
The document criticised Gupta's companies as so far
providing "very limited" and "wholly inadequate" disclosure
regarding assets.
"Asset disclosure...leaves unanswered the central question
of what has become of the very large sums of money which
Trafigura has paid (defendants) in relation to the cargoes," the
document said.
Gupta’s spokesperson said: “Our disclosure has not been
inadequate. It wholly complies with the court order.”
Trafigura said it ended up inspecting 156 out of 1,104
containers by the time it filed court papers for the original
freezing order, none of which contained nickel.
(Additional reporting by Pratima Desai and Polina Devitt;
Editing by Alexander Smith, Kirsten Donovan)
