Trafigura bought some LME 'nickel' that was just bags of stones

Trafigura Group, one of the world’s biggest metals traders, was among the companies that received bags of stones from a London Metal Exchange warehouse instead of the nickel briquettes they had paid for.

The amounts of money involved are small, but the issue presents a fresh headache as the company wades through the fallout of a massive alleged fraud it reported last month — also involving missing nickel. Trafigura has said there’s no connection between the bags of stones discovered on the LME and its legal action against Indian businessman Prateek Gupta, who it accuses of perpetrating a vast and “systematic” fraud.