Radiant world reveals near-empty coffers to Jefferies fund

Radiant World, the iron ore trading group that’s under fire amid allegations of fraud, has revealed to lawyers for a Jefferies Financial Group fund that it has hardly any cash left.

The Jefferies fund is seeking to continue a worldwide freezing order of $499 million, from a London court last month. In court filings ahead of a hearing in London on Thursday, lawyers for the Jefferies fund said that Radiant World had disclosed to them “enormously lower” cash and inventories than was shown in their most recent annual accounts.

Simon Salzedo, a lawyer for LAM Trade Finance Group II LLC, the fund that’s managed by Jefferies unit Point Bonita, said in court that Radiant World was part of a a “very large scale fraud.”

“They are party to a very sophisticated, large scale international conspiracy,” Salzedo said, arguing to continue the freezing order over Radiant World founder Pinkesh Nahar.

Nahar’s lawyer in court on Thursday denied the allegations made against him, including those about alleged breach of orders to disclose his assets.

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Several top commodity traders stopped doing business with Radiant World amid concerns it had provided falsified documents to banks to raise financing. Radiant World denied wrongdoing and said it conducts its business to the highest commercial and legal standards.

When the Jefferies fund earlier this year began to investigate unpaid receivables it had been financing for Radiant World, it “gradually uncovered that many of the documents purportedly supporting the unpaid receivables had been falsified, including invoices, contracts, and notices of assignment,” according to the judgement imposing the freezing order, which was cited by the Jefferies fund’s lawyers.

The fund also discovered that payments that it had received had in fact not been paid as a settlement of the invoices it believed, but “in satisfaction of completely different debts,” according to the judgement.

Radiant World hasn’t produced any evidence that “casts doubt on the claim that they are in fact party to sophisticated fraud,” Salzedo said in court.

Radiant World Corporation Pte, the company’s main Singapore operating company, disclosed assets of $1.07 billion to the Jefferies lawyers, but more than $1 billion of this was made up of trade and other receivables which Jefferies argued could not be relied on. The values of inventories and cash were “enormously lower” than in the company’s most recent annual accounts for the year ended September 2025, they said.

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Radiant World Holding, the company’s Hong Kong holding company, disclosed just $10 000 in cash, compared to more than $200 million in its most recent annual accounts. And Sapphire Minmetals Corporation, a legally separate but closely related company, disclosed cash of $3.8 million, compared to $66.5 million in its most recent annual accounts.

It was normal for commodities trading companies to have amounts owed to them as trade receivables, a lawyer representing Sapphire Minmetals said in court. The assets, including receivables, were enough to cover the claim.

Radiant World and related companies have been reducing their headcount and selling inventories since Bloomberg first reported in late July the concerns over falsified documents.

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