Commodity dealers Glencore used MSC to ship briquettes regularly from Western Australia, where they were produced, to Antwerp in Belgium for use by European industrialists. The briquettes were carried under bills of lading which required, in the ordinary way, that the bill be surrendered to MSC on arrival in exchange for the goods or a delivery order relating to them. Containers were discharged on arrival into MSC’s compound at the port of Antwerp to await collection. At the time, the port of Antwerp operated an “electronic release system”, or ERS, under which the bills of lading were surrendered to carriers, who in turn electronically sent a PIN code to the receiver and the port authority. Keying in the code admitted the receiver’s truck driver into the terminal and allowed him to collect the goods.

The ERS worked perfectly for some 18 months, but in June 2012 it broke down. MSC discharged three containers of briquettes, together worth comfortably over $1.5 million, into their Antwerp compound, and issued Glencore’s local agents with the necessary PIN codes to collect them. Unfortunately, someone’s computer had been hacked, and by the time the driver got there fraudsters had used the codes to drive off with two of the containers. They were never seen again.