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Vietnamese exporters are at risk of losing hundreds of millions of USD in a suspected scam in which they have not received any payment as agreed for 100 containers of cashew nuts already dispatched to a buyer in Italy.

According to the Vietnam Cashew Association (Vinacas), through a Vietnamese broker, several cashew nut exporters have signed contracts to export 100 containers of the product to Italy, to be transported by international shipping lines Cosco, YANGMING, HMM, and ONE to the ports of Genoa and La Spezia.

The Vietnamese sellers have received no payment to date, though some containers have arrived in Italy while others are on the way.

The sellers reported that there are changes made to the SWIFT code in the documents of collection sent from Vietnamese banks to those allegedly representing the importer in Turkey. The Turkish banks declared the buyer is not their client and said they had sent back the documents. It is noteworthy that those banks neither specified how they had sent back the documents nor provided Vietnamese banks with bills of lading.

Meanwhile, after some documents of collection were sent to the buyer’s bank in Italy, the Italian bank replied that it had received only copies of the bills of lading, not the original versions, causing rising concerns among the exporters as the whereabouts of the original documents remain unknown. Anyone with the original documents can present them to the transporters for the release of the goods.

Suspecting it is a scam, the Vinacas has sent an urgent notice to the Embassy and the Trade Office of Vietnam in Italy to request for help. The association urges the Vietnamese missions to coordinate with competent authorities in Italy and the carriers to prevent the release of the cashew nut containers to the consignees even if they are able to present the original bills of lading.

The carriers should only allow the release of the goods after getting confirmation from the Vietnamese sellers, the Vinacas said, adding that they also need to inform the sellers all information about the consignees./.