Fraud Office raids metal trader

A COMPANY with links to former Labour Cabinet minister Jack Cunningham and other politicians was raided by the Serious Fraud Office and two people were arrested.

RBG Resources, a metal trading company controlled by the Rastogi family, one of Asia's richest families, is being investigated for alleged false accounting, the SFO said. No one has been charged.

In uncanny echoes of the damaging Lakshmi Mittal affair, the Blair Government helped RBG win a lucrative copper smelting privatisation by lobbying the Romanian Government in 1998.

Piccadilly-based RBG was raided by officers from the SFO and City of London police after the appointment today of provisional liquidators Grant Thornton.

Cunningham, Tony Blair's so-called Cabinet Enforcer, is a paid consultant to RBG. Other consultants include Liberal Democrat adviser Lord Holme and former Conservative energy minister Lord Gray. Chief executive Viren Rastogi was recently named Britain's 10th richest Asian.

PricewaterhouseCoopers resigned as RBG's auditors in January, citing a breakdown in trust. Viren Rastogi is under investigation by the Indian Customs body for alleged fraud. Allied Deals, a company thought to be closely linked to RBG, is reportedly under investigation by the FBI in America.