‘Kidnapping’ of scrap trader questioned

Oct 27, 2008 | 01:19 PM | Paul Schaffer

A claim that a British company's senior scrap trader was kidnapped in China over a business dispute was called into question Monday, with a Chinese trade association executive asserting the report was false.

"The 'kidnapping' mentioned by a U.K. company is not the fact," Ma Hongchang, vice secretary-general of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Recycling Metal Branch (CMRA), said in a letter to Robin Wiener, president of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), Washington.

The letter was in response to an ISRI alert to its members on international business conditions and personal safety while visiting international customers.

"Over the last two weeks, ISRI has become increasingly concerned with reports from members in the U.S. and around the world of cancelled orders, defaults and efforts by buyers in Asia (and China in particular) to extort extraordinary discounts from the contracted prices for shipments of scrap. This problem seems to have escalated," ISRI's posting said, citing the purported incident involving the scrap trader at London-based Goldarrow Metals Ltd.....