Trade financing platforms and other lenders often face an uphill battle to recover assets in commodities fraud cases, particularly where multiple senior creditors are pursuing the same pool of assets. Where recourse against individuals is available, lenders should act quickly to gather evidence of deceit and secure assets before recovery prospects are diminished by competing claims.
On 30 July 2026, two of the world’s largest commodity trading companies, Vitol and Cargill, announced they had halted all business with Radiant World. This was based on concerns that the Singapore-based trading house had provided allegedly falsified trade documents and invoices to its creditor banks.
This set off a chain of events. The Singapore Police, the US Justice Department and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission all announced they were probing transactions related to Radiant World. In addition to these official investigations, multiple banks froze accounts held by Radiant World, further trading houses halted their transactions with the firm and civil lawsuits were filed in Singapore by Japanese bank, Mizuho, and Singapore trade finance platform, Incomlend.
A familiar playbook: a decade of Singapore-linked commodity scandals
This is just the latest in a series of scandals centred around document fraud involving commodities traders in Singapore. In early 2020, a crash in global oil prices exposed two significant trade finance frauds, leading to the spectacular collapse of oil trading companies Hin Leong Trading and ZenRock Commodities. Hin Leong's founder, O.K. Lim, confessed to having concealed over USD 800m in futures losses and directing the forgery of trade documents to secure roughly USD 3.85bn in credit from over 20 banks, while secretly selling off the oil pledged as collateral. At around the same time, ZenRock collapsed under more than USD 600m in debt, after lenders discovered the firm had engaged in duplicate financing – using fabricated documents and complex round-tripping transactions to repeatedly pledge the exact same cargo to different banks.
Then in early 2023, Singapore-headquartered Trafigura uncovered a USD 577m deception. The commodity giant discovered that thousands of shipping containers, which had been financed through complex arrangements with entities tied to Indian businessman Prateek Gupta, and documented as holding high-grade nickel, were actually filled with low-value carbon steel, scrap metal, and rubble.
These incidents showed that even the world’s most sophisticated trading desks remain vulnerable to physical substitution fraud when they rely on paper documentation for cargo that is non-existent, substituted or double-pledged.
The pivot to personal liability
These scandals were a shock for banks who reacted quickly to reduce their risk. Since 2020, major players like ABN Amro and BNP Paribas have completely shut down or drastically shrunk their commodity trade finance desks in Asia. The banks that retained these services in Asia severely slashed credit limits for independent traders, preferring to finance only the absolute largest, integrated commodity giants, such as Glencore, Trafigura or Vitol.
But commodities traders still needed billions of dollars on a daily basis to finance their trades and move cargo. Many turned to alternative finance and fintech invoice platforms. These platforms pitch themselves as being faster and more agile than traditional banks. They allow traders to upload shipping documents and invoices, and often crowdsource capital from family offices, private credit funds or high-net-worth investors to fund the invoices. While these lending platforms have modernised the funding mechanism, what the unfolding Radiant World crisis indicates is that they appear to have inherited the same blind spot as the traditional banks: a reliance on unverified documents.
On 24 August, an alternative finance platform, Incomlend, became one of the first parties to file a civil lawsuit against Radiant World at the High Court in Singapore, seeking to recover more than USD 34m. The cause of action is listed as “tort of deceit conspiracy by unlawful means”. Notably, the defendants extend beyond the company itself. In addition to Radiant World, the claim names founder and majority owner, Pinkesh Nahar, and Amit Sharma, managing director of Tanas Capital, a Singapore-based investment firm, where Nahar also serves as a director.
This suggests that Incomlend may be looking to target the assets of Nahar and other parties for enforcement. Among Radiant World’s 21 secured creditors, the majority are banks, who typically would apply a floating charge over all of the company’s assets. Invoice-financing platforms such as Incomlend, by contrast, often only register a charge over each specific invoice they funded. If the financed invoices are ultimately found to be invalid, Incomlend could face difficulties enforcing the receivables that were intended to form its collateral. In that scenario, claims against individuals alleged to have participated in the underlying conduct could take on a greater significance. The inclusion of Nahar and Sharma as defendants suggests that Incomlend is pursuing recovery directly against those individuals, rather than relying solely on claims against Radiant World. The strategic necessity of targeting individuals was further underscored in late September 2026, when court filings revealed that six receivables financiers are trapped holding a combined USD 870 million exposure.
This approach differs markedly from the Hin Leong collapse, where in 2020 creditors, who were exclusively major banks, chose to place the company in judicial management. It was the liquidators who eventually filed the USD 3.5bn lawsuit against founder O.K. Lim. A global Mareva injunction was not filed against O.K. Lim and his family until May 2021, over a year after the crisis broke. During the intervening period, O.K. Lim had the opportunity to dissipate and restructure assets, complicating eventual recovery efforts. The same strategy is still being used by senior lenders in relation to Radiant World. In mid-September 2026, Japanese bank Mizuho, facing a reported USD 100m exposure, moved to appoint interim judicial managers over Radiant World. On 24 September, a Singapore High Court judge granted the application, appointing KPMG restructuring executives to take control. In doing so, the judge dismantled Nahar’s defense that the company was solvent with over USD 1 billion in assets, noting a "prima facie pattern of fraudulent conduct" and rejecting Radiant's USD 2 billion counter-suit against Glencore as a realisable asset.
While senior banks rely on this traditional corporate insolvency route, junior creditors are proving the value of moving directly against personal wealth. The importance of this new, aggressive strategy by alternative lenders was confirmed in early September 2026. A trade finance fund managed by Jefferies Financial Group launched a USD 500m claim in the London High Court, successfully securing a worldwide freezing order against Radiant World and founder Pinkesh Nahar. The lawsuit explicitly alleges a fraudulent scheme involving falsified contracts and invoices. It also widens the number of defendants, naming another iron ore trader, Sapphire Minmetals, as a co-defendant. For creditors, the lesson is clear: waiting for the corporate liquidators is no longer a viable option.
Actionable corporate intelligence: arming the Mareva injunction and proving deceit
With senior secured lenders walling off corporate inventories and cash, recovery often hinges on executing a multi-pronged investigative strategy. This includes identifying personal liability, evidencing deceit and conspiracy, tracing funds and securing assets across the globe. Investigative work must be carried out alongside, or even before legal action to arm claimants adequately.
In similar matters, we have helped creditors in the following ways:
- Global asset mapping and identification of dissipation efforts: From the outset, it is important to unpack complex corporate structures and identify assets. This is essential to arm any Mareva injunction. As well as this, parties looking to preserve assets must show that there is an urgent risk of dissipation. Investigators should be engaged to provide evidence of restructuring using trusts, offshore structures or nominee owners. For example, recent disclosures in the Radiant World crisis reveal that a significant portion of its claimed assets are purportedly owed by obscure entities based in the Middle East, alongside related companies. Asset recovery now depends on investigators urgently deconstructing these entities to determine if they hold real capital or are merely alter-egos used for circular round-tripping.
- Monitoring: It is not always possible to show an imminent risk of dissipation, sufficient to be granted freezing injunctions. In these cases, once assets have been identified at the outset of any matter, investigators should be engaged to monitor for signs of moves to put them beyond the reach of enforcement.
- Identification of evidence of deceit: Claims against individual counterparties on the grounds of conspiracy and deceit must be supported by evidence. Investigators can help to gather evidence and intelligence using information sources including trade records, satellite imagery of vessel movements and discreet conversations with individuals close to the matter who have non-public information relating to conspiracy to defraud, collusion or other relevant matters. With major counterparties like Glencore now publicly alleging that Radiant World used fabricated internal emails to secure bank credit, forensic investigation of source material is also a key investigative step.
When collateral is built on paper promises, recovery becomes a race against time. Waiting for an insolvent entity to make creditors whole is unlikely to be a successful strategy. Additional investigative steps must be taken to uncover assets, follow financial flows and build evidence against the individuals involved. In these cases, moving early is often the difference between recovery and loss.