> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.fridayfinance.co/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Fake Iron Ore Invoices, Protein Boom, Getting Money out of Iran, SpaceX to buy Tesla? and Disappearing Yachts - URL: https://www.fridayfinance.co/fake-iron-ore-invoices-protein-boom-getting-money-out-of-iran-spacex-to-buy-tesla-and-disappearing-yachts/ - Published: 2026-10-16T21:20:38.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-16T21:20:38.000Z - Author: Sam Perera - Tags: Friday Finance **52nd Edition** Greetings folks and a warm welcome to the 52nd Edition of Friday Finance, A former British civil servant is on trial in London, accused of secretly holding up to 5 full-time government jobs at once. Prosecutors say Kashim Chowdhury, 55, worked for 8 public bodies between 2020 and 2023, including the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). **At one point he was contracted to work 183 hours a week. There are 168 hours in a week.** Prosecutors say he collected £284,613 (about US$380,000) during the overlapping periods. He kept his camera off in meetings, citing laptop problems that his DEFRA manager said took 4-5 months to fix. On one sick-leave call, prosecutors say, he wore white make-up on his face but not his neck. DEFRA made him permanent anyway, over his manager’s objections. He denies all 9 fraud charges. Let's get right to it. --- ## **Jefferies and the Fake Iron Ore Invoices** > **TL;DR:** A Jefferies fund financed $3.8 billion of iron ore invoices that Glencore says were already paid or never existed. It says $526 million is still outstanding. Mizuho caught the same trick in 6 days by phoning Glencore. This is the fund’s second blow-up in a year, after First Brands. **A Jefferies fund is suing an iron ore trader in London for more than $500 million, alleging a large-scale fraud.** The fund, Point Bonita, buys invoices from traders at a discount and collects when they fall due. Since 2021 it financed $3.8 billion of invoices that Singapore’s Radiant World and a related trader, Sapphire Minmetals, said Glencore owed them. Glencore says many had already been paid, and that some were never genuine. Vitol says the same about invoices bearing its name. Jefferies says $526 million is still outstanding. Radiant denies wrongdoing and has sued Glencore in Singapore for about $2 billion. Glencore calls that suit meritless. In February, Point Bonita emailed Glencore about $42.5 million of overdue invoices. Glencore replied that the fund’s relationship was with Radiant, not with Glencore. Later that month, Glencore sent Radiant a spreadsheet showing most of the financed invoices had already been paid, some as early as July 2025\. A freezing order did not come until August. By then, Radiant owed about $870 million to six lenders, led by Jefferies and Intesa Sanpaolo. **Jefferies’ lawyers now say Radiant may have $10,000 in cash. Its audited accounts a year earlier showed more than $200 million.** The US Justice Department, the CFTC and Singapore police are investigating. Mizuho had lent $95.5 million against five cargoes supposedly sold to Glencore. On August 6, Radiant forwarded a Mizuho banker an email from Glencore confirming payment. The banker called Glencore directly. The Glencore manager said he had never sent it. **Five days later, Glencore told Mizuho the five trades did not exist.** This is Point Bonita’s second blow-up in a year. Last October it disclosed about $715 million of exposure to First Brands, the bankrupt auto parts maker, nearly a quarter of its portfolio. In both cases, the money flowed through the seller rather than straight from the buyer. Jefferies’ asset management revenue fell 52% last quarter. If only the lender did something very complicated, like picking up the phone and confirming. --- ## **The Protein Boom** > **TL;DR:** Whey, the cheesemaking leftover that used to go to pigs, now sells for about $32,000 a tonne, nearly 6x its 2023 price. Coca-Cola expected to pay about $320 million in bonuses for the Fairlife protein milk brand. It is now looking at close to $6 billion. Parma ham pigs were traditionally fed the whey left over from making Parmesan. That leftover is now one of the most sought-after ingredients in food. **Whey protein concentrate sells for about $32,000 a tonne, up from about $5,500 in 2023, nearly 6x.** The Dutch dairy co-operative FrieslandCampina no longer sells whey proteins for animal feed. It is spending more than €90 million to turn more of its whey into protein for people. Its head of marketing told the Financial Times that “cheese has already become a byproduct of whey.” The problem is supply. Roughly 10 kg of milk makes 1 kg of cheese and leaves about 9 kg of whey, so whey can only grow as fast as cheese. Demand was pushed first by gym culture, then by weight-loss drugs, which cost users muscle as well as fat. In January new US dietary guidelines set a daily protein target of up to double the old recommendation. Sales of high-protein snacks rose 9.6% in the year to March, against 0.9% for snacks overall. **Coca-Cola bought control of Fairlife, a high-protein milk brand, in 2020 for $1 billion plus performance payments then expected at about $320 million. Those payments are now estimated at close to $6 billion.** Danone paid about $1.2 billion for the shake maker Huel. Glanbia, which owns Optimum Nutrition, says demand rose 25% in the first half, and its shares are up about 80% in a year. Nutrition researchers point out that protein deficiency is rare in the US. Saputo, the Montreal cheesemaker, spent about C$180 million upgrading its whey plant in Wisconsin, lifting output of its main protein product by about 35%. Its chief executive says growth in cheese will fuel its whey business, and it is now looking to buy cottage cheese makers. **Canada’s own Food Guide takes a different line from Washington. It gives protein a quarter of the plate and tells Canadians to choose plant proteins more often.** A Canadian fitness coach quoted by the FT calls many protein bars candy in disguise. --- ## **Getting Money Out of Iran** > **TL;DR:** The rial has lost almost 90% of its value in five years and inflation is 89.8%. About $27 billion left Iran last year, against a $2 billion central bank defence. Iranians move money through exchangers, middlemen and crypto, and the US has sanctioned the biggest crypto exchanges. **Iran’s rial has lost almost 90% of its value against the dollar in five years, and more than 55% in the past year.** One dollar now buys about 2.6 million rials on the open market. Inflation hit 89.8% in September, a record. A US naval blockade has choked oil exports, and new US sanctions on Iran’s car and rail sectors arrived on October 1\. A cargo from Shanghai used to take 26 days. It now takes 102 to 120\. On September 30 the central bank said it would sell up to $2 billion in cash to prop up the currency. By the central bank’s own figures, about $27 billion left Iran last year, roughly 8% of GDP. Most of it moves without crossing a border between banks. An Iranian pays rials to an exchanger in Tehran, and a partner abroad pays out dollars or euros from money already held there. Importers use intermediary firms the same way, at extra cost. Networks running through the Gulf have been disrupted by the war. Crypto was the other route. In June the US Treasury sanctioned Iran’s four biggest crypto exchanges, led by Nobitex. Together they had handled at least $40 billion. **The blockchain analysts at Elliptic found that Iran’s own central bank had bought at least $507 million of a dollar stablecoin, most of it through Nobitex.** Canada has treated every financial flow to or from Iran as high-risk since 2020, whatever the amount. Banks, credit unions and money services businesses must report them to FINTRAC, Canada’s financial intelligence agency. In the first year, FINTRAC received 142 Iran-related suspicious transaction reports. **In the latest year it reported, it received 19,572, about 138 times as many.** Canada listed the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist entity in 2024. --- ## **SpaceX to Buy Tesla?** > **TL;DR:** Barclays thinks SpaceX could announce an all-stock takeover of Tesla before Tesla’s December annual meeting, at about 0.7 SpaceX shares per Tesla share. Musk controls about 82% of SpaceX’s votes and about 20% of Tesla’s. The day after the note, Tesla unveiled a Roadster that uses SpaceX-designed thrusters to jump over other cars. **Barclays thinks Elon Musk could announce a merger of Tesla and SpaceX before Tesla’s annual meeting, which must be held by December 6.** In a note this week, analysts led by Dan Levy said SpaceX would be the buyer, paying in its own shares. They estimate Tesla shareholders would get about 0.7 SpaceX shares for each Tesla share, before any premium. Barclays values SpaceX at about $2.07 trillion and Tesla at about $1.45 trillion. Combined, that is about $3.5 trillion, with Tesla shareholders owning roughly 41%. The bank sees the main value in combining the two companies’ AI work, including a joint chip plant. Neither company has confirmed anything. Prediction markets give it about a 25% chance this year. Musk sits on both sides. He owns about 42% of SpaceX and controls about 82% of its votes. After exercising about 304 million Tesla options in June, he controls about 20% of Tesla’s votes. Any deal needs approval from both boards and both sets of shareholders. SpaceX listed on Nasdaq in June at $135 a share, the largest IPO ever. It has since bought Musk’s AI company, xAI, and its Starlink unit made $4.4 billion of profit last year. **The day after the note, Tesla showed a car that already combines the two.** The new Roadster has 10 thrusters fed by 600 litres of compressed air, stored in tanks designed with SpaceX engineers. At the reveal near Waco, Texas, it drove up an inverted ramp, spun and dropped to the road. It also jumped over a Cybertruck, a Semi and three other Teslas. Tesla says it goes from 0 to 60 mph in about a second. It is not approved for public roads, and Musk said “safety is not the main goal.” Tesla first unveiled this Roadster in 2017, when up to 1,000 Founders Series buyers paid $250,000 each. Musk now says it will be built in 2028\. Tesla shares rose about 4% on Friday morning. Hopefully the flying feature is not subscription-based, imagine your subscription running out while you’re upside down? --- ## **How Abramovich’s Yachts Disappeared** > **TL;DR:** Leaked files show Deloitte’s Cyprus arm signed off accounts in which $672 million of Roman Abramovich’s yachts, homes and jets vanished, after his advisers backdated the paperwork three years. In another company, $10 billion became $145,000 using a second company with the same name. Abramovich and Deloitte deny wrongdoing. In 2006 Cyprus passed a law requiring company accounts to be made public. That was a problem for Roman Abramovich. A leak of files from his Cyprus advisers, reported this week by BBC Panorama and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, shows what happened next. Deloitte’s Cyprus arm had drafted 2003 accounts for one of his companies, Amiscan Investments. They listed $672 million of assets, including a Sussex mansion, a villa in the south of France, private jets and the $147.5 million superyacht Pelorus. His advisers moved the assets to a company in the British Virgin Islands and backdated the transfer by three years. Deloitte reviewed the backdated documents and called them “adequate.” **When it signed off the accounts, $75,000 of assets remained.** A second company, Kravin Investments, had almost $2 billion in the bank in 2003, earning interest that should have been taxed in Cyprus. In 2005, after a meeting with Deloitte, his advisers proposed to “change the financial statements and the accounting records” for 2003 and 2004\. Backdated papers then showed Kravin was only holding the money for someone else. A London barrister told the BBC it was tax evasion that “couldn’t be more blatant.” A third company, Electus Investments, held more than $10 billion. **His advisers used a second company with exactly the same name, registered in the BVI, and backdated a transfer to it. The Cypriot Electus then published accounts showing $145,000.** Abramovich denies evading tax or hiding his wealth. His lawyers say he was not involved in running the companies and that relying on professional advice was proper. Deloitte Cyprus says it acts within the law and cannot comment on documents more than 20 years old. Deloitte is now the world’s biggest accounting firm, with $74.5 billion of revenue last year. Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK in 2022 and had to sell Chelsea. **About £2.5 billion from that sale is still frozen in a British bank account, and it has earned at least £175 million in interest.** Another £5.4 billion of his assets is frozen in Jersey, where a criminal investigation has run for four years. Canada moved in 2022 to seize US$26 million held by one of his companies, the first time it used its new forfeiture law. I bet the logic Deloitte used was that the assets were more than 3 years old (assuming they were), then they could have moved it 3 years ago and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Grey, but technically not illegal I guess. --- Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who spent 16 months in a Russian prison on espionage charges he denied, has revealed what was in his welcome-home kit. He was freed on August 1, 2024, in a 24-person prisoner swap in Ankara. On the flight to Andrews air base in Maryland, he was handed a small package. These kits are usually put together by the State Department. **This time the CIA made them, and his contained a Viagra pill.** “We couldn’t figure it out,” he told the Cheltenham Literature Festival. He has kept it as a memento. His mother had also arranged a bottle of High West Campfire whisky for the flight. **The CIA would not let him drink it, because he had to be sober to meet President Biden.** I guess you can be excited to meet the president, but not drunk. **“Trust, but verify.”** — Ronald Reagan Have a fantastic weekend. I welcome feedback and please forward this if you see fit. Many thanks, Sam --- **Market Snapshots** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9e/cd/9ecdba3a-371c-45d6-888e-4690ee860243/content/images/2026/10/marketsnapshot_52.png) *Note: money rotated out of AI stocks this week and into banks, healthcare and consumer names. Worries about the debt behind AI data centres, led by CoreWeave, hit chipmakers. US producer prices rose 1.3% in September, the biggest monthly jump since March 2022\. That pushed bets on a Fed hike in December higher, even as the 10-year Treasury yield fell about 14 basis points on the week. Brent stayed above $100\. The IEA says on-land oil stocks fell by 113 million barrels in September, to the lowest since at least 2016\. In Canada the TSX jumped 553 points on Thursday. The loonie recovered from last week’s 18-month low after strong manufacturing sales. The Bank of Canada and the Fed both decide on October 28.* *1 USD = 1.417 CAD at Friday morning spot.* --- **Sources** Personnel Today, London Crime News citing BBC London and The Standard (opener); Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance, The Edge Malaysia and MINING.COM, Reuters, Global Trade Review, Bloomberg Línea (Jefferies); Financial Times, NutraIngredients, Dairy Reporter, The Irish Times, FoodNavigator, TipRanks, Dow Jones (protein); Al Jazeera, Iran International, Elliptic, CoinDesk, Middle East Forum, The Globe and Mail (Iran); Bloomberg via 24/7 Wall St and Quartz, TechCrunch, CBS News, Teslarati (Tesla and SpaceX); BBC Panorama, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, The Guardian, CPA Practice Advisor, Global Affairs Canada (Abramovich); The Telegraph via Mediaweek, NPR (closer); Yahoo Finance, 24/7 Wall St, BNN Bloomberg, Trading Economics, Vantage Markets (market data). *Market data pulled Friday October 16, 2026 using October 15 closes, with Friday morning’s moves noted. Dow and Nasdaq closing levels are approximate. Live items this edition. Kashim Chowdhury denies all charges and his trial is continuing. The Radiant World allegations are untested, and Radiant denies wrongdoing. Barclays’ Tesla-SpaceX view is an analyst forecast, and neither company has confirmed talks. The Abramovich findings come from leaked documents; Abramovich and Deloitte Cyprus deny wrongdoing. Canada’s forfeiture case against Granite Capital has no reported final ruling. Currency at Friday morning spot.*