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Sanjeev Gupta will call on managers to bankrupt its main commodity trading business and mark the final chapter of one of the controversial metals giants.
Liberty Commodities, renamed last month as 3349135 Limited, filed a “Notice of Intent to Appoint an Administrator” on Thursday, according to UK court records.
Liberty products once claim to trade billions of dollars of metals a year, and are one of the oldest companies in Gupta’s GFG Alliance Conglomerates. Founded in 1997, it took root in the commodity trading work in which Gupta ran out of dorm rooms at Cambridge University in the early 1990s.
The company has not filed an annual account that has been audited for nearly five years, but it is becoming difficult to see the current operation and the size of its assets.
Gupta is being charged with allegedly failing to file accounts for free goods and more than 70 other companies. He is fighting for the charges after pleading not guilty at a hearing in Cardiff last year.
Liberty Commodities is one of many Gupta companies that borrowed billions of dollars through Greensill Capital, and collapsed in 2021 after being exposed to a business with large metal problems.
After Greensill’s collapse, many parties who named the invoice issued by Liberty Commodities denied doing business with the company. Gupta has previously denied fraud, and his GFG Alliance Group is working with a long-term, serious fraud room investigation into its finances.
A person familiar with the Liberty Commodities business said he has not done business with third parties in “a few years.” They added that GFG is “actively” pursuing power as part of a broader debt restructuring.
In recent years, Liberty Commodities has previously tried to involve businesses from investors in debt trading supported by Greensill invoices.
Gupta resigned as director of Liberty Products last July. He has been replaced by Kenneth Tointon, a 76-year-old semi-retired accountant who helped prepare financial statements for many Gupta businesses over the past year.
Liberty products declined to comment.
