We in the NTI newsroom suspect that there are a few Grant Thornton staff working this Bank Holiday Friday. They will be over at Greensill trying to make head or tail of invoices sent out by the company that are otherwise making little sense.
Greensill's Administrator has been unable to verify invoices underpinning loans to Sanjeev Gupta, after companies listed on the documents denied that they had ever done business with the metals magnate. This is strange, because everything else you hear about Mr Gupta suggests that he and his activities are utterly above board and impervious to investigation. The disputed invoices raise questions over other transactions underpinning billions of pounds of loans from Greensill to Gupta.
Grant Thornton are looking to recoup money for creditors which is (we think we have to insert the word 'allegedly' here) owed to Greensill and are making their way through the list of debtors to Mr Gupta’s Liberty Commodities. Greensill had factored debts to Liberty Commodities, enabling it to exchange bills from customers for cash upfront. However, several of these companies have disputed the veracity of the invoices from the metals magnate’s commodities trading firm, according to people familiar with the matter and correspondence seen by the Financial Times, as reported this morning (Friday 2 April).
Grant Thornton have refused to comment, and Gupta's CFG Alliance said they were unable to provide any further information until they had seen the relevant invoices. Netflix are on the horizon drafting up the contracts for the docu-mini-series, having outbid the BBC's Panorama, and the NTI newsroom are looking forward to revealing further layers of this like an onion. It's all much more fishy than Billingsgate Market and the biggest fish of all, Sanjeev Gupta, is swimming around in an ever-decreasing pool.
Watch this space.
