‘Kindly assist to get a back-dated letter’
On the morning of June 22, 2023, a Singapore-based trade coordinator for S Alam Group answered a question from the conglomerate's lawyers. The lawyers, at Singapore firm Rajah & Tann, wanted evidence against a straightforward query.
If S Alam could not open letters of credit for two soybean oil shipments from ADM, where were the bank letters showing it had tried?
The coordinator, Vani Durairaj, forwarded the request to two colleagues in Bangladesh. Rather than asking them to search existing records, she wrote: "Dear Sirs, if feasible, kindly assist to get a back-dated letter from SIBL & IBBL (in bank usual format)."
The reply that followed was a template. Ten letters, dated between November 30, 2022 and February 15, 2023, would record requests from S Alam to Islami Bank Bangladesh and Social Islami Bank seeking confirmation of draft letters of credit, followed by refusals citing unavailable credit lines.
The email did not attach any existing letters. Instead, it instructed recipients to prepare them.
The instructions extended to presentation. "Kindly check the dates (if it's Public holiday in Bangladesh or Bank holiday) and amend the dates if required to bank working days and please provide SIBL and IBBL letters in different format with banks usual wordings."
The two banks named in the email would later become central to one of Bangladesh's biggest banking scandals. Fourteen months later, after the fall of Sheikh Hasina's government, regulators froze S Alam-linked shareholdings in six banks, including Islami Bank Bangladesh and Social Islami Bank, while investigators alleged the group had exercised extraordinary influence over the country's banking system.
The June 2023 email predates those investigations but reflects the relationship later described by regulators. One day earlier, S Alam had informed its lawyers that the bank rejection letters were being "sourced."
The deal nobody would bank
The underlying dispute was straightforward. In late 2022, as Bangladesh's foreign exchange reserves came under pressure, two S Alam companies agreed to buy 32,500 tonnes of crude soybean oil from ADM International Sàrl, the Swiss trading arm of the American agribusiness group.
The cargo was worth about $49 million and scheduled to arrive in Chattogram by mid-December. Payment was to be made through confirmed letters of credit, with ADM responsible for nominating the confirming bank.
The letters of credit were never opened. S Alam's internal chronology, prepared for its lawyers, records both parties' explanations. S Alam said it issued draft credits through Islami Bank Bangladesh and Social Islami Bank and awaited ADM's confirmation. It also said ADM never issued a proforma invoice for the second shipment.
The same chronology records ADM's position. On November 25, 2022, five days before the first shipment window closed, ADM informed S Alam that it was "unable to work with Islami Bank and Social Islami Bank" and asked the group to route the letters of credit through banks on ADM's approved list. S Alam declined, maintaining that the transactions would proceed only through its nominated banks.
Documents in the email cache show that the same arrangement had worked previously. In May 2022, Islami Bank Bangladesh issued a $5.9 million letter of credit for an earlier S Alam purchase from ADM, which UniCredit in Munich confirmed.
But in November, no foreign bank was prepared to confirm similar letters issued through the same banks.
The transaction collapsed. In the first week of December 2022, ADM declared both contracts to be in default, describing them as "a breach of condition and/or repudiatory breach of the contract." In February 2023, it invoiced S Alam for $4.57 million in damages.
Internal records also show a brief misstep. On November 29, 2022, Durairaj sent ADM a notice alleging that the seller had defaulted first. She withdrew it later that day. The internal chronology states that she had acted "without knowing the story behind."
A sleeping opponent
In April 2023, ADM referred the dispute to arbitration under the rules of FOSFA, the London-based Federation of Oils, Seeds and Fats Associations. It appointed its arbitrator and then took no further procedural steps for several months.
S Alam's lawyers took note. In advice to the group, they wrote that ADM appeared "not very keen" to pursue the case and warned that filing a counterclaim could "wake up" a dormant opponent. Time, however, was limited. Under FOSFA's one-year limitation period, any counterclaim by S Alam had to be filed by November 29, 2023.
The group decided to prepare one. The emails document how that process unfolded.
The counterclaim rested largely on two onward sales. After purchasing the soybean oil from ADM, S Alam had agreed to sell the refined product to two Rajshahi-based buyers, Shimul Enterprise and Nabil Grain Crops Ltd. If those resale contracts and the associated costs could be substantiated, they would support the group's claim for lost profits.
On June 16, 2023, three days after an internal strategy meeting and six days before the request for backdated bank letters, revised copies of both resale contracts began circulating within the group. Each filename included the word "Replace." The contracts were forwarded to the lawyers on June 19.
Compared side by side, the original and replacement versions are nearly identical. They carry the same contract numbers, dates, signatures and company seals. The principal difference is price.
Across the two contracts, the replacement versions reduce the contract values by almost $6.8 million. The earlier versions bear a handwritten notation: "VOID."
The lawyers immediately asked why two signed contracts existed with the same date and contract number but different prices. S Alam attributed the discrepancy to an administrative error.
According to the group's explanation, the original contracts contained an incorrect rate that had been corrected on the same day, and months later an employee inadvertently retrieved the superseded version from the database while the staff member familiar with the transaction was on leave.
Regardless of the explanation, the emails show which version the group intended to rely on. A claim spreadsheet prepared that summer calculated damages of $9,286,195 using the replacement prices.
'Hints provided by Lawyer'
One document in the cache is a Word file circulated to S Alam's commercial team in Bangladesh on June 13, 2023 ahead of a meeting on the ADM dispute. Its opening line reads: "Hints provided by Lawyer in email."
The document compiles questions raised by the lawyers during their review of the proposed counterclaim, identifying issues that required documentary support.
One issue concerned events after the ADM contracts collapsed. S Alam had supplied discounted palm oil to Shimul Enterprise and Nabil Grain Crops under contracts dated December 4, 2022. When both buyers later asserted claims against S Alam, however, they calculated their losses as though those palm oil deliveries had not occurred.
The lawyers asked whether the palm oil had been accepted as a substitute for the soybean oil and, if so, where the supporting documents were.
The final section of the Word file is headed "Documents to be prepared." It lists six documents, all bearing dates months earlier: a proposal letter dated January 5, 2023 offering palm oil in place of soybean oil; acceptance letters dated January 7; an instruction to "Change Nabil and Shimul – Palm oil Sales contract date to Jan 10, 23," altering contracts originally dated December 4, 2022; a thank-you letter dated March 15; a revised claim letter dated March 2; and a supporting cost sheet.
Each proposed document corresponds to an issue raised by the lawyers. The emails do not indicate that the lawyers knew how those documents would be assembled. Rather, the correspondence shows the lawyers repeatedly requesting evidence to support the proposed counterclaim.
The same approach extended to publicly available material. Before sending newspaper reports about Bangladesh's foreign exchange crisis to the lawyers, Durairaj asked colleagues to review them for "sensitive issues that's against S.Alam... to avoid any further complication."
The file also contains Bangladesh Bank's emergency circular on edible oil imports, indicating that the underlying market disruption was genuine. The correspondence focused on how those materials would be presented to support the group's legal position.
The neighbours
The two buyers named in the documents—Shimul Enterprise and Nabil Grain Crops Ltd—appear, on paper, to be independent traders that agreed to purchase about $55 million worth of edible oil from S Alam.
Both, however, list the same address: 15/2 Ahamadnagor, Sopura, Rajshahi.
Their conduct, as recorded in S Alam's internal chronology, also became relevant to the proposed counterclaim. After receiving ADM's notices of default in early December 2022, S Alam wrote to both buyers requesting that they cancel their contracts. The buyers declined.
Instead, they asked S Alam not to deposit cheques they had already issued and insisted that deliveries proceed, stating that they had onward commitments to their own customers.
According to S Alam's internal records, the buyers subsequently took delivery of 3,086 tonnes of oil but did not pay for it. The same records also show that the buyers later submitted claims against S Alam totalling about $3.7 million.
Those claims formed part of the evidence S Alam intended to rely upon in its proposed counterclaim before the FOSFA tribunal.
The documents do not explain the relationship between the two companies beyond the information contained in the contracts and correspondence. They do, however, show that both companies shared the same registered address and featured prominently in the loss calculations prepared for the arbitration.
The email cache also contains records relating to the payment of legal fees.
Rajah & Tann's April 2023 request for a $20,000 retainer was addressed not to S Alam but to Wilkinson International Pte Ltd, a Singapore company registered on Cecil Street.
A subsequent invoice issued in June 2023, seeking $27,158 for "advising on breaches of contracts," was addressed to another Singapore company, Donway International Pte Ltd, registered at a unit in Sim Lim Tower on Jalan Besar.
A United Overseas Bank payment record included in the cache shows Donway International settling the invoice. By the time Durairaj prepared her handover in late October 2023, the records show that Rajah & Tann had received $54,282.95 through these Singapore entities.
Neither Wilkinson International nor Donway International was a party to the soybean oil contracts or the arbitration. The documents reviewed do not explain why they paid legal fees incurred in connection with S Alam's dispute with ADM.
'Documents need to be produced'
The record ends with Durairaj's departure from the case.
On October 25, 2023, she circulated a handover email setting out pending responsibilities. Among routine operational matters, she instructed colleagues—in capital letters—to send the lawyer-drafted notice of arbitration to ADM and FOSFA "WITHOUT FAIL ON 27 NOVEMBER 23," two days before S Alam's deadline to file a counterclaim expired.
The lawyers had prepared the draft notice, and arbitrator E Manovil had agreed to act. Durairaj's handover stated that the decision to proceed had been made by the group's chairman.
"Upon Chairman's instruction, we are heading to send an Arbitration letter to ADM on 27th Nov 23."
Six days later, in what appears to be her final substantive email on the matter, Durairaj assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the case.
She expressed confidence in S Alam's defence against ADM's claim but raised concerns about the proposed counterclaim.
"I feel challenged and not fully satisfied with counter claim documents provided by us to the Lawyer. There may be flaws in our arguments primarily due to non-existence of strong evident documents."
She also noted that the lawyers' questions about why S Alam had not purchased replacement soybean oil after the contracts collapsed had received explanations she considered "less than ideal."
The email concluded: "This will mark the beginning of a fresh phase in the case and documents need to be produced based on future ADM queries."
What the file does not say
The documents also have clear limits. They establish what appears in the emails and attachments, but they do not answer every question raised by the correspondence.
The cache shows requests for backdated documents, detailed instructions for preparing them and internal planning around evidence for the proposed counterclaim. It does not show whether the requested bank letters were ultimately produced, whether the revised documents were submitted in arbitration, whether the notice of arbitration was sent on 27 November 2023, or how the tribunal responded.
The email archive ends on October 31, 2023, four weeks before the filing deadline.
The phrase "if feasible" in the request for backdated bank letters also leaves open the possibility that the request was not carried out.
Not every issue is conclusively resolved by the documents. S Alam provided an explanation for the duplicate resale contracts, stating that an incorrect pricing entry had been corrected on the same day and that the superseded version was later retrieved from the database by mistake.
The record reflects disputes between the contracting parties, an independent financial analyst consulted by Waadaa said. S Alam maintained that Bangladesh's foreign exchange crisis and difficulties in obtaining confirmed letters of credit prevented the transactions from proceeding.
ADM, according to S Alam's internal chronology, declined to accept letters of credit issued through the group's nominated banks and requested that alternative banks be used. The chronology also records S Alam's complaint that ADM did not provide a proforma invoice for the second shipment.
Durairaj's role in the correspondence appears to have been that of a coordinator. Throughout the emails, she relayed requests, circulated documents, coordinated with lawyers and colleagues, and conveyed decisions attributed to senior management.
The documents reviewed do not indicate that she was a decision-maker in the underlying transactions.
S Alam Group and its chairman, Vani Durairaj, Subrata, Rafique, Rajah & Tann, ADM, Shimul Enterprise, Nabil Grain Crops Ltd, Islami Bank Bangladesh, Social Islami Bank, Wilkinson International Pte Ltd and Donway International Pte Ltd have been, or will be, invited to comment.
Daily Waadaa had not received any response by the time of publication.
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