With its 2010 investment in Glacial, Platinum got involved in a company that already had a record of questionable spending.
In 2007, internal financial statements of Glacial's New York unit, reviewed by Reuters, show that Glacial CEO Mole and his team spent more than $671,000 on travel and entertainment - the same year for which the company ultimately recorded a loss of approximately $5 million.
More significantly, the 2007 statements show $17.9 million in "consulting" fees paid to a mining company in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
These dealings were the basis for some of the lawsuits alleging various forms of wrongdoing filed against Glacial and Mole in ensuing years. All of those lawsuits were ultimately defeated, dismissed or pushed off into bankruptcy proceedings.
But one allegation gained additional weight in September last year, when Mole was arrested on charges of tax evasion. The New York attorney general alleged that he funneled Glacial profits into the Congo mining company, which operated in a region where illicit mining profits have been used to fund armed conflict. Reuters could not determine whether the Glacial-linked mining company was involved in conflict minerals.
Mole pleaded not guilty; he faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. He did not respond to requests for comment.
The person familiar with Platinum said the firm was aware of Mole's spending and put protections in place to curtail it.
Early Scandal
Nordlicht grew up outside of New York City in suburban Long Island, and graduated from nearby Yeshiva University with a degree in philosophy in 1990. With $11,000 saved from what he had received for his bar mitzvah, he started trading commodity options. In these early years, National Futures Association records show, various New York exchanges fined him small amounts on eight different occasions, mostly for improper record-keeping.
In the early 2000s, after helping start a small private equity firm, he co-founded commodities brokerage firm Optionable. The New York Mercantile Exchange took a 19 percent stake in the fast-growing operation in early 2007.