Evil Diaries: Frauds

My elder daughter’s husband who handles the metals trading end of a mining group brings my attention to the fact that Trafigura, a major metals recovery and trading organisation, recently bought a consignment of nickel bearing ore for $577m only to find that it had bought an entirely useless consignment of rocks. Trafigura had paid cash with order and will not be getting any of this dough back. The vendor was one Gupta who committed the fraud.

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The other day a longstanding chum, who retired as a solicitor many years ago, told me that when at Oxford he and three other chums under the age of 21 (then the minimum age into which to enter into a contract for non-necessities) hired a jet plane to convey those to whom the fearless four had sold tickets to the US and back. The four made a profit but, as my chum disclosed, had they made a loss the owner of the jet could not have sued them – the four had no money. I pointed out to him that the four would have been guilty of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception. No age limit here. Two of the four are now knights. Talk about the great and good at fraud.

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Poppy Gustafsson of DARKtrace has just called in EY to investigate the Quintessential short report on DARK. I reckons this is merely the generation of persiflage. Stay short. Now 275p.