'Fake' Aluminum Stocks Put Perils of China's Commodities Funding in Spotlight
- Traders point to similarities with the Qingdao scandal in 2014
- Companies are checking metals inventory after pledging claims
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The opaque world of funding commodities trading in China is again under the spotlight.
This time, metals markets are fixated on an incident in the southern province of Guangdong, in which several traders claim they were duped into providing credit against fictitious quantities of aluminum. More than 500 million yuan ($75 million) may have been loaned, backed by stockpiles of the metal stored in a warehouse in the city of Foshan that turned out to be worth significantly less than that.