Suspended Glencore Executive Told Radiant ‘Say Nothing on Email’
Published Fri, Sep 18, 2026 · 08:37 AM
A SENIOR Glencore executive last year urged counterparts at Radiant World not to communicate by email, according to WhatsApp messages from the company’s head of iron ore seen by Bloomberg News.
“Say nothing on email,” Peter Hill wrote in one WhatsApp message in early April 2025. In other messages dating from 2023 to 2025 he highlighted Glencore’s role as an important backer of the Radiant World group of companies, and suggested that he was the ultimate decision maker for various aspects of Radiant World’s trading.
The messages raise questions about the depth of Glencore’s involvement with the Radiant World network of companies. Glencore was a key backer of Radiant World, Bloomberg has previously reported, but the relationship has ended in acrimony in recent weeks with Glencore publicly accusing the Radiant World group of fraud while Radiant World has filed a US$2 billion lawsuit against Glencore.
Hill was suspended from his duties pending the outcome of a review into Glencore’s dealings with Radiant World, Bloomberg reported on Thursday (Sep 17).
Screenshots of some of the messages were shown to Bloomberg News; in other cases, their contents were relayed by people familiar with them, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. Bloomberg News was not shown the full context of the conversations in which the messages were sent.
A spokesperson for Glencore declined to comment on the messages. Hill did not respond to calls or messages and the Glencore spokesperson said he declined to comment. A spokesperson for Radiant World did not respond to a request for comment.
The relationship between Glencore and Radiant World has come into focus after Radiant World, Sapphire Minmetals and several related companies filed the lawsuit against Glencore in Singapore this week.
Glencore has said that the “claims are meritless and we will contest them vigorously” and that Radiant World is suing it “for telling the truth about their fraud”.
Radiant World has been accused of fraud in court documents by at least two of its lenders after Bloomberg reported concerns that it had been providing falsified documents to banks to raise money.
Glencore, long its key backer, has cut ties and taken a US$480 million provision on its outstanding exposure to the group, which includes Sapphire Minmetals, a closely connected but legally separate trading company. Radiant World has denied wrongdoing.
Some of the WhatsApp messages from Hill were sent from his personal mobile phone, while others were sent from his Glencore phone, according to the people familiar with the matter.
In one series of messages in December 2023, Hill appeared to be discussing a forthcoming conversation with Societe General about its lending to Sapphire Minmetals.
Company filings show that Societe Generale lent money to Sapphire to finance prepayments to Glencore for iron ore supplies, in deals that were guaranteed by Glencore itself.
“Soc gen asking to speak to me about sapphire prepayment,” Hill wrote. “What argument did you use for them,” he said.
In another message, in May 2023, he implied that there had been certain issues with the way that Glencore and Radiant World had conducted their relationship in the past.
“I don’t for a second doubt your integrity but there’s a big challenge and we just need to work on it together and sometimes that requires some hard chats and some adjustments to how things have been done,” he wrote.
“Say jump”
In other messages, Hill suggested that Radiant World could only do certain trades with his authorisation. The Radiant World companies had been hit by a spike in iron ore prices in 2021 when they built up a debt of approximately US$1.1 billion to Glencore, according to the Singapore lawsuit.
“You need to hear and listen to what I’m saying – if I say stop, I need you to stop, if I say jump I need you to jump,” Hill wrote in a message in September 2023.
Later, in October 2025, Hill offered a window into the pressure he was facing internally within Glencore.
In a message on Oct 20, 2025, a few days after Bloomberg published a profile of Radiant World and for the first time reported historic allegations of fraud against it, he wrote that chief executive officer Gary Nagle and Glencore’s board had “just ripped me a new asshole”.
In recent years, Hill’s star had appeared to be rising in Glencore.
He was approached by Vitol Group in 2024 but decided to stay at Glencore, Bloomberg has reported. In August 2025, he was promoted from head of iron ore to run the trading of all steelmaking commodities, including coking coal, where Glencore had just become one of the leading players thanks to its acquisition of Teck Resources’ coal business.
In one of the messages before the breakdown of the relationship, he offered hope for a rosier future. “US$350m to go mate.. then we in golden territory,” he wrote in February 2023. “Maybe we go buy a mine together!”
Hill’s role as head of steelmaking commodities made him the Glencore executive with direct responsibility for the Radiant World relationship. Still, he is not the only person in Glencore who was involved in the relationship.
Jyothish George ran Glencore’s iron ore unit from 2014 to 2021 and is now head of trading for all metals and bulk commodities.
And Radiant World’s lawyers, in a letter to Glencore last month, named five other Glencore employees as having been involved in the relationship, while the Radiant World lawsuit also claims that Glencore’s top management, including CEO Nagle, chief financial officer Steve Kalmin and former CEO Ivan Glasenberg, were aware of and approved Glencore’s continued exposure.
Glencore has not yet directly addressed those claims in its response to the Radiant World case. BLOOMBERG
