(April 7): The businessman who masterminded a huge nickel fraud against Trafigura Group was named by Mauritius as the ultimate beneficiary of toxic loans that led to the collapse of a local lender.
Prateek Gupta and entities linked to him received a total of 7.9 billion Mauritian rupees from Silver Bank, in which his wife Ginni Gupta held a 75% share, Premier and Finance Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam told lawmakers on Tuesday.
Silver Bank was put into receivership in March due to lack of takeover interest. The lender was previously placed under auditor control and revealed non-performing loans of 8.1 billion Mauritian rupees out of a total loan portfolio of 8.3 billion Mauritian rupees.
“It is unthinkable that such a high level of toxicity of a loan portfolio could have been tolerated by Silver Bank and the Central Bank turned a blind eye to this momentous mismanagement,” Ramgoolam said.
Ginni Gupta’s shareholding was in spite of Mauritian Banking Act rules that state no single shareholder should own more than 10%, except with the prior approval of the Bank of Mauritius, according to Ramgoolam.
Prateek Gupta was in January found guilty by an English judge of perpetrating fraud on a “grand scale” against Trafigura that saw losses of almost US$600 million after it was discovered containers of nickel it had bought from Gupta in fact contained low-value substitutes.
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Gupta, who no longer has legal representation in the English civil case, couldn’t be reached for comment.
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