Copper's International Man of Mystery

By Paul Kedrosky · Friday, November 18, 2005 ·
The Financial Times gets a little closer to Lui Qibing, the man behind some bizarre trades roiling copper markets. While the Chinese government is painting him as a rogue trader, people close to him make a convincing case that there is more to it than that. Either way, the kerfuffle has caused another recent misfortune for Mr. Liu:
Class reunions are popular in China and last night a group of former Wuhan University students met in a Shanghai restaurant for a meal of hairy crab and Great Wall cabernet sauvignon. Unfortunately for the diners, the most famous class member could not make it.

When they last met, Liu Qibing – the absent classmate – was an official at a little-known government agency in Beijing that deals in commodities. This weekend he is at the centre of what could become a large international trading scandal involving vast numbers of copper contracts on the London Metals Exchange.

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