LONDON (Reuters) – Lawyers for Indian businessman Prateek Gupta plan to ask a London court for a two-week extension to file a challenge to a $625 million global freezing order on him, a source with knowledge of the situation said on Friday.
The court had previously given a deadline of Friday to challenge the freezing order that was sought by commodity trader Trafigura, which has alleged “systematic fraud” by Gupta’s companies over nickel cargoes.
Gupta’s representatives, which have previously said they would provide a robust response to the fraud allegations, needed more time to gather documents, said the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the case.
In February, a London court imposed a freezing order on bank accounts and other assets tied to Gupta and seven companies Trafigura said are controlled by Gupta, including those in Britain, Singapore, Malaysia and Switzerland.
In April, the court also imposed a freezing order on his wife, Ginni Gupta, relating to a house in Dubai, in which the couple are believed to live, and a Cayman Islands investment fund, a court document by Trafigura’s lawyers said.
Freezing orders are injunctions granted by the English courts to restrain individuals or businesses from disposing of or dealing with assets on a worldwide basis.
In court papers submitted previously, the Geneva-based trader had said it began to suspect in October last year that around 25,000 tonnes of metal sold by Gupta’s firms may not be high-grade nickel, and began inspecting more than 1,000 shipping containers.
Earlier in February, Trafigura told the judge in a closed-door hearing that some of the first containers inspected were found to contain carbon steel, which is worth a fraction of the price of nickel.
Trafigura said it ended up inspecting 156 out of 1,104 containers by the time it filed court papers for the original freezing order, none of which contained nickel.
(Reporting by Eric Onstad; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and David Evans)
