Rudolf Wolff refused to comment

Rudolf Wolff refused to comment.Simultaneously, details also surfaced of a parallel civil inquiry by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, (CFTC), which is the main federal body that oversees commodities trading in the US. Among firms it is believed to be reviewing is Winchester Commodities of the UK.In a statement confirming his probe, John Tull, acting chairman of the CFTC said: "In order to restore the confidence necessary for this market ... I have directed the commission staff to examine any and all relationships, financial or otherwise, between Sumitomo and any of the business concerns whose identies have surfaced or will surface in the course of the commision's surveillance of the copper market."In Japan, Sumitomo's vice-president, Mutsumi Hashimoto, gave an evasive performance, refusing to comment on reports linking Mr Hamanaka's copper trades with Global Minerals and Metals. Global, founded in 1993, is reported have had close ties with with Sumitomo to the extent that the securities house even offered to invest as much as $3m to fund its creation.Mr Hashimoto also left open the possibility that Sumitomo may sue Mr Hamanaka and that senior management, including the Sumitomo president, Tomiichi Akiyama, might resign, and hinted that a proposed buy-up of the corporation's own shares, scheduled for a general shareholders' meeting on 27 June, was now in jeopardy.He added that the corporation would "thoroughly reinforce our internal control system," although he failed to explain how this might be achieved.In a further unsuccessful attempt at damage limitation, Sumitomo gave a private briefing to securities analysts from major brokerages to answer questions about Mr Hamanaka's losses. "They were trying to reassure us, but in my case it had the opposite effect since they were able to answer so few of our questions," said Paula Sugawara of Lehman Bros "I still think there's a lot of bad news yet to come out. To be running up those kinds of losses and the company not to know seems incredible.""We had expected the company to give us more details about the loss but they didn't, so it was very disappointing," said Kota Nakako, an analyst at SBC Warburg who has reversed his recommendation on Sumitomo from buy to sell.

Sumitomo shares closed 20 yen higher at 1,030 yen, after a 200 yen fall on Monday.Journalists have been unable to track down Mr Hamanaka, who is said by his daughter to have left the family home in Kawasaki, near Tokyo, late last week for an unknown destination. Sumitomo claims to have no knowledge of his whereabouts.In London, Winchester Commodities Group said it "vehemently denies" responsibility for any Sumitomo losses. It said it had had minimal involvement with Sumitomo in the last 12 months during which many brokers were heavily engaged representing the Japanese firm. Winchester said it would be happy to help any inquiry and "has nothing to fear".The London Metal Exchange, which has stayed silent on the scandal since the weekend, promised a statement today after a meeting of its copper specialists yesterday. The price of copper remained stable in London, $10 higher at $1,990 a tonne, but trade slowed to a trickle.Nymex, the New York energy and metals market, has been campaigning for tighter regulation of the London Metal Exchange since well before the Sumitomo crisis emerged, because of concerns that problems could spill over into the US..

By the time Sumitomo Corporation was forced to admit the scale of its huge losses at the hands of Yasuo Hamanaka, most back-street scrap metal merchants already knew who he was and what he was up to. Their trade magazines had long been writing about the activities of "Mr Five Per Cent", the man able to determine the helter-skelter prices of the used copper pipes and boilers they dealt in since at least 1993. The attention of the London Metal Exchange, the premier world metals market, had been drawn three years ago to a significant squeeze taking place in the availability of copper.In essence, the cash price of copper - available at two days' notice - was higher than three-month futures contracts for the same metal, a process known as "backwarding".This is seen as unusual because the futures price takes into account the additional cost of warehousing, insurance and the use to which the money employed to buy copper might be put instead.The conclusion reached by many brokers, including some who reportedly complained to the LME, was that Mr Hamanaka was involved in cornering the market for copper.Sumitomo, a significant end-user of copper, has an interest in controlling its price, both to obtain the metal cheaply and to ensure that its future supply is obtained at stable prices. The Bulgarian goalkeeper was stopping everything the French were throwing at him; he could not be expected to halt miscalculations from his own players. It proved to be a temporary reprieve, however, because seven minutes later Djorkaeff floated over a corner from the right that Blanc met emphatically with his head, thumping the ball between Mikhailov and Emil Kremenliev on the line.Mikhailov also had to be agile to save a chip from Christophe Dugarry after 43 minutes and only just got a boot to the ball when Djorkaeff missed a through ball from Vincent Guerin and almost wrong-footed him. From the lusty singing of "La Marseillaise" beforehand to the crunching foul Desailly inflicted on Stoichkov in the third minute, it was clear they were highly motivated.This energy was nearly sated as early in the 13th minute, Borislav Mikhailov diving low to his left to tip Youri Djorkaeff's free-kick round the post. "We were punished for our mistakes," Dimitar Penev, the Bulgarian coach, said, "but despite this defeat I still feel my team has done well.