Prateek Gupta was convicted of forgery offences by a Dubai court in 2024 over his role in a more than half-a-billion-dollar nickel trading fraud against Trafigura, but later acquitted on appeal, court documents show.
Trafigura sued Gupta in London in 2023, alleging he was behind a fraudulent transit finance scheme that cost it more than US$500mn. Earlier this year, a judge found Gupta and several companies controlled by him liable for Trafigura’s losses after he sold the trading firm goods purported to be high-grade nickel that were, in reality, much less valuable materials.
Filings submitted this month by Gupta’s legal team as part of separate legal proceedings in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts detail for the first time a Dubai criminal investigation into the same allegations levelled by Trafigura.
The documents, translated from Arabic, show that following a police investigation, Gupta was charged in May 2024 with multiple counts of forgery and use of forged documents, relating to bills of lading that were presented to Trafigura. The probe was triggered by a 2023 complaint from Trafigura, which submitted a lengthy forensic report laying out its allegations.
After a one-day trial on June 11, 2024, Gupta, who lives in Dubai, was convicted and sentenced to one month in jail and deportation.
But the following month the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which said in a brief judgment that it had “no confidence” in the statements of Trafigura’s representative or a forensic accounting report.
“The presented evidence in the case is not sufficient to convince the court that the charge against the accused appellant is proven,” the presiding judge wrote, according to the translation. “The court believes that the facts have other aspects that were not made clear in the documents.”
Dubai’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, affirmed Gupta’s acquittal last year, overruling arguments by the emirate’s public prosecution service. Prosecutors had argued that the appellate judges did not consider the full range of evidence and produced a judgment “deficient in reasoning, corrupt in inference, and contradictory to the established facts in the documents”.
But in upholding Gupta’s acquittal, the apex court said the “prosecution’s argument in this regard amounts to a debate about the evaluation of evidence, which is not permissible before the Court of Cassation”.
Gupta, through a lawyer, declined to comment on the previous proceedings. Trafigura also declined to comment.
Enforcement efforts
Following its court win against Gupta in London, Trafigura is trying to recoup its losses by tracing and seizing his assets in Dubai. As part of those efforts, the firm secured a freezing order against the businessman and his wife Ginny in April 2025.
In June Trafigura asked a DIFC court to strengthen the freezing order against Mrs Gupta, but the court is yet to issue a judgment on the request.
A further hearing in that case is scheduled for August 31. Documents filed by Gupta show he will argue that the DIFC court cannot enforce the London judgment partly because it would contradict the findings of the local courts in the criminal proceedings.
At the same time, Trafigura will call on the court to make an immediate judgment against Gupta.
