How an iron ore empire began to raise doubts

In a corporate presentation in December 2024, Radiant World boasted of its “diverse network” of suppliers and counterparties.

The company was barely known outside the insular world of iron ore trading, but it was flying high. Its net worth had tripled in five years, according to the presentation, and it was handling enough iron ore to make it one of the world’s largest traders of the commodity that’s critical to the global economy because of its use as the raw material for making steel.

Among the logos featured in the presentation were those of Glencore Plc and Cargill Inc., two of the world’s biggest commodity traders. Now, however, those companies have pulled back from dealing with Radiant World amid concerns it provided banks with falsified documents about iron ore trades, Bloomberg reported on Friday.


The developments, which Radiant World has denied, shine a harsh light on what had been a story of spectacular growth that took place largely out of the public eye.

Radiant World has quietly become such a significant participant in the iron ore market that some traders had started to see it as a driver of the market in its own right, betting that any financial stress on the company could push iron ore prices lower, Bloomberg reported in October. (The company declined at the time to discuss the specifics of its business and performance.)

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Its scale has made it a major counterparty and borrower for many of the world’s largest traders, miners and banks, with some $12 billion of annual revenue.

On Friday, Bloomberg reported that Intesa Sanpaolo SpA and Jefferies Financial Group Inc.’s Point Bonita fund were reviewing their exposure to the company, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue. Intesa said in a statement to Bloomberg that it had taken a provision on its exposure to Radiant World. Corporate filings show that as many as two dozen banks and other creditors may have some exposure to the company.

It’s not clear yet what kind of losses Intesa and Jefferies might sustain – Intesa has said its exposure is around €200 million ($231 million), while Point Bonita’s is less than $300 million, and people familiar with the matter in both cases say they hope to recover their money. And while checks with Radiant World counterparties have revealed discrepancies in some of the paperwork underpinning its financing, Jefferies at this point believes that the underlying trades are valid, a person familiar with the matter said.

But the episode is another reminder of the risks that lurk within supposedly safe corners of finance, where credit is secured by documents such as invoices and shipping receipts.

Cargill and Vitol Group have done no business with Radiant World for several months, while Glencore is no longer doing new business with the company, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

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Two of the trading houses saw invoices or other documents that Radiant World had provided to its banks that were not valid, several of the people said, asking not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. The third pulled back from dealing with Radiant World after its traders were told by colleagues in the industry about concerns about falsified documents that the company considered credible, one of the people said.

Radiant World denies that. In a statement on its website after Bloomberg’s story was published, it said: “The claims are inaccurate and unsubstantiated. Radiant World conducts its business to the highest commercial and legal standards and complies with all due diligence requirements with its lending partners.”

“Our business continues to operate normally,” it added.

A Radiant World spokesperson had sent Bloomberg details of what he said were recent trades involving each of Vitol, Cargill and Glencore. However, people familiar with the matter in each case said that the trade details were incorrect and the contract numbers mentioned did not refer to any real trade involving Radiant World and those companies.

Commodity traders typically use documents such as trade invoices and shipping receipts as security for credit lines from banks and other financiers. The falsified documents came to light when banks started contacting Radiant World’s counterparties to check invoices the company had used to raise financing, according to people familiar with the matter.

In one instance reported by people with direct knowledge of it, invoices for iron ore trades with Vitol were used by Radiant World to raise financing with Intesa. However, when Intesa checked the details of the invoices with Vitol, it was told by Vitol that some of the underlying trades did not exist, the people said, asking not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Rapid Rise

Radiant World started out in 2003, when founder Nahar was just 23, according to the company presentation seen by Bloomberg News. Initially focused on exporting iron ore from India, the company expanded later that decade into China — where a rapid industrialization and infrastructure boom had turned the steelmaking ingredient into one of the world’s hottest commodities.

By 2008, Radiant World had formed relationships with Chinese steel mills, state-owned enterprises and huge international miners such as Vale SA, Rio Tinto Group, and BHP Group, according to the 2024 presentation.

While most metals and minerals trading is dominated by two large merchants — Glencore and Trafigura Group — iron ore has not traditionally been a big business for the industry. Instead, the small group of huge miners that dominate supply have tended to sell directly through contracts with the Chinese steel mills that are their biggest customers.

From 2012 onward, the company started to deepen its ties with major ferrous traders including Cargill, Prosperity Steel United, Trafigura and Glencore, according to the presentation.

Radiant World’s growth in the ensuing years has been dramatic. From trading about 7 million tons of iron ore a year in 2014, according to comments Nahar made to Indian journalists at the time, by 2024 the presentation says the company’s volumes had surged to 43 million tons. Its business continued to expand through 2025, so that by October Bloomberg reported it was on track for annual volumes of around 65 million to 70 million tons of iron ore. It has also branched out into other metals like copper and aluminum.

Yet while Radiant World became an increasingly important player in iron ore, it maintained such a low profile that even within the commodities industry few people had even heard of it.

Nahar almost never speaks publicly; the last time he appears to have been quoted in the press was more than a decade ago, speaking at an iron ore conference in Singapore. People who know him have described Nahar as an intellectual and reserved family man, who enjoys playing chess. Beyond commodity trading, he has set up a wealth-management business, a charitable foundation, and a Bollywood film production company.

Trading Disputes

There is a long history of commodity-trading disputes where vast amounts of money changed hands on the basis of documents that later turned out to be misleading. Trafigura lost more than $500 million after finding that cargoes of nickel it was buying and selling from another trader actually contained other, near-worthless metals. In 2017, several banks faced sizable losses after discovering they’d received counterfeit warehouse receipts for nickel.

Radiant World itself has been the subject of questions about the documents involved in its trades before. Bloomberg reported last year that Cooperatieve Rabobank UA had stopped financing Radiant World in early 2020, after an internal investigation at the bank — a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg — found that the trading house had been involved in multiple trades involving falsified shipping documents, known as bills of lading. Radiant World’s “level of involvement can leave no doubt as to their lack of integrity,” the Rabobank report concluded.

At the time, Radiant World said that it had not been aware of the Rabobank investigation and that it had never been investigated or prosecuted by any regulatory authority.

Still, the allegations cut across the image of itself the company presented. As the title of its December 2024 presentation put it: “Radiant World, Global Business Built on Trust since 2003.”