Intesa Sanpaolo grew suspicious about invoices provided by iron ore trader Radiant World and filed a police report more than a month before another lender, Mizuho, entered into new financing arrangements with the company, a Singapore court judgment shows.
The judgment, published today, details the financing arrangements between Radiant World and two lenders, Intesa and Deutsche Bank’s Singapore branch, which have not previously been made public. Along with Mizuho, the two banks successfully petitioned to have the trader placed in interim judicial management.
Radiant World has faced a slew of legal claims from lenders and a public accusation from Glencore that it falsified invoices, emails and other documents to obtain receivables financing from lenders including major banks and trade finance funds. The company has consistently denied any wrongdoing and has said blame for its predicament lies with natural resources giant Glencore, a major trading counterparty.
Intesa and Radiant World signed an uncommitted accounts receivables purchasing agreement in June 2024, the judgment shows. In April this year, Radiant World told the bank that a buyer was having difficulty repaying certain invoices and that the trader would pay them itself.
But given the unnamed buyer was “a significant global enterprise and had just posted strong profits, [Intesa] doubted the accuracy of the information”, according to the judge’s summary of the bank’s claim.
Intesa decided to contact all Radiant World’s debtors and received the “substantially unanimous” response that the buyers had no records of the invoices submitted to the bank by Radiant.
“Accordingly, on 7 May 2026, [Intesa] filed a report with the Singapore Police Force in relation to a case of suspected fraud supposedly committed through invoices of fictitious and fraudulent nature,” the judgment says.
In August, the bank issued a statutory demand to Radiant for US$126.1mn relating to several outstanding receivables purportedly owed by Cargill, Vitol and Glencore, of which each trader had told the bank they had no record.
The timeline reveals how Intesa became aware of concerns about Radiant World’s invoices well before Mizuho and Deutsche Bank, which only began investigating after a July 31 Bloomberg report that Glencore, Vitol and Cargill had stopped doing business with the trader.
Mizuho signed its receivables financing facility with Radiant on June 11, more than a month after Intesa’s confidential police report, and shortly afterwards purchased receivables for almost US$100mn. Police confirmed an investigation into Radiant World, via statements to the press, in August.
Deutsche Bank’s receivables financing relationship with Radiant World began in 2021, the judgment shows. After becoming aware of the Bloomberg article, the Frankfurt-headquartered lender began investigating invoices worth US$113.8mn it had purchased from Radiant World for sales of iron ore to Vitol and Glencore.
Vitol said it had no records of the six receivables it purportedly owed.
Glencore said the one invoice it purportedly owed had been issued by Radiant World in February, did not have an assignment of proceeds notice in favour of Deutsche Bank, and had already been paid by Glencore to Radiant World’s account at Deutsche Bank in March.
Radiant World chairman Pinkesh Nahar, in an affidavit cited in the judgment, denied allegations the receivables were fraudulent and said the company had cross-claims against the bank such as “damages arising from the refusal to process its payment instructions, and substantial damages arising from the withdrawal of liquidity and its consequences for [Radiant World’s] business”.
The Vitol and Glencore transactions “were genuine”, Nahar said in the affidavit. “The existence of different contracts and invoices for the same shipment, and the fact that payment had been made under one part of the arrangement, do not mean that the receivables presented to [Deutsche Bank] were fictitious.”
Nahar also said in at least two affidavits that the firm’s trading relationships with Vitol and Cargill were “a direct outgrowth” of its ties with Glencore. Judge Kristy Tan said it is “unclear what the company was insinuating by this allegation”.
Mizuho and Deutsche Bank declined to comment. Radiant World and Intesa did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In placing Radiant World in the hands of interim judicial managers from KPMG, Judge Kristy Tan found there was a prima facie case that trader is or is likely to become unable to pay its debts.
“There is an urgent need for interim judicial managers to investigate the company’s affairs in the light of the prima facie pattern of fraudulent conduct on the part of the company’s management that has been seen,” Judge Tan wrote.
Judge Tan said she accepted Mizuho’s submission that there is “reason to question” whether the just over US$1bn in assets declared by Radiant World have been inflated by “fictitious receivables”.
