LONDON,
May 19 (Reuters) - GFG Alliance's steel operations in Liege will be restarted
shortly, after a Belgian court overturned a ruling they should be put into
administration, the company owned by commodities tycoon Sanjeev Gupta said on
Thursday.
Gupta
has been scrambling to refinance his international network of steel and
aluminum and energy businesses following the collapse of supply chain finance
firm Greensill Capital last year.
A
commercial court in Belgium last month ruled administrators should be appointed
to GFG's Liberty Steel operations in Liege due to negative equity, but that
decision was overruled on appeal, GFG said in a statement.
"We’re
very pleased that our appeal has succeeded and ... we are now looking forward
to restarting production as soon as possible," Liberty Steel official
Toker Ozcan said.
GFG
has injected more than 28 million euros ($30 million)into the Liege operations
since December and aims to ramp up production to 110,000 tonnes per month by
October, GFG added.
GFG
acquired the Liege operations, which include two sites that employ about 650
people in total, and a third steel plant in Dudelange, Luxembourg, from
ArcelorMittal in 2019.
Britain's
Serious Fraud Office (SFO) stepped up a probe into GFG last month as teams of
investigators demanded documents such as balance sheets, annual reports and
other correspondence.
The
SFO last year opened an investigation into suspected fraud, fraudulent trading
and money laundering at the Gupta Family Group Alliance (GFG).
A
GFG spokesperson declined to comment at the time, but an internal memo seen by
Reuters said the company had consistently rejected any wrongdoing and pledged
full cooperation.
($1
= 0.9473 euros) (Reporting by Eric Onstad Editing by Edmund Blair and Mark
Potter)