Two former employees of Gerald Group have filed a lawsuit in the United States alleging wrongdoing and misconduct by the commodity trading company's senior management - accusations that Gerald denies.
Guoliang Zhao and Fabio Calia allege in the lawsuit that a share-dilution scheme was created that allowed senior management to misappropriate almost $300 million in shareholder value from Metals Trading Corporation (MTC), the entity in which Gerald Group employees held shares. The share dilution scheme also resulted in an alleged $68.6 million corporate inversion, a strategy used to reduce MTC subsidiary GISA's federal and Connecticut state tax burden, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in the Judicial District of Stamford, Connecticut. Lawyers for Zhao, previously responsible for Gerald Group's businesses in Asia, and Calia, former global head of structured finance and co-head of investments, could not be reached for comment. According to Gerald, the allegations, statements and stories are neither accurate nor true and the plaintiffs have no valid claims."The depiction of our restructuring is completely false and there was no such restructuring that ever took place as mentioned,"...