In fact, no cheap nickel was purchased, so there was none to sell. There was no agreement with the mine, and no forward contracts for the sale of the metal, prosecutors said.
A Singapore businessman who convinced investors to put a total of $1.5 billion into a nickel trading scheme channelled a third of that into his own accounts, prosecutors said at the start of his trial.
Ng Yu Zhi, a former accountant, faces 42 charges including fraud, forgery and money laundering. He’s accused of leading investors in his Envy Group to believe they could profit from physical nickel trades, thanks to his purchases of discounted metal from an Australian mine. In reality, the scheme was “pure fiction,” the prosecution said in an opening statement.
