From Reuters:
"News of a investigation into a metal financing fraud at Qingdao Port, where a third-party company is suspected of using single cargoes of metal multiple times to obtain financing, has rattled banks and trading houses and unsettled markets."
...
"Pledging commodities to a bank, often using a warehouse receipt as proof of ownership, has become a popular way of raising finance in China, often to skirt restrictions on raising credit and helping drive up stockpiles at some ports."
Not all warehouse receipts are created equal.
From UBS:
And then there's aluminum. Their estimate seems low. It's an old scam, right? How many separate banks can you get on the hook and string along?
"In March, the bank [Goldman Sachs] estimated commodity finance deals in China were worth as much as $160 billion, or about 31 percent of the country's total short-term foreign exchange loans."
Citic Resources now says they're missing 123,446 metric tons of aluminum at the Qingdao Port:
Makes you wonder how much everyone else who stored metals there will be "unable to sequester." You have to love the euphemism.
From the Qingdao Port prospectus:
