Chinese Trader’s $20 Million Pile of Russian Copper Goes Missing
- Purchase from mystery Russian smelter never made it to port
- Metal listed as granite is likely to have ended up in Turkey
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A giant state-owned Chinese commodities trader is nursing losses after a shipment of copper from Russia worth nearly $20 million went missing, reigniting fears over fraud in the often secretive market for buying and selling raw materials.
Wuchan Zhongda Group Co., which had sales of 580 billion yuan ($80 billion) in 2023, bought 2,000 tons of refined copper from a Russian smelter that should have been delivered last month. It never made it to port, according to people with knowledge of the incident.