The Committee to Nuke Elysium

The trade took place on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (Liffe), a market which trades contracts in commodities such as corn, wheat, sugar, coffee and cocoa.

Most of these contracts are “options” or “futures” giving a trader the right to buy these commodities at a certain price at a certain time in the future. What made yesterday’s trade so unusual was that the mystery buyer or buyers took physical delivery of the commodity.

The beans will be stored in one of Liffe’s warehouses in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bremen, Felixstowe, Hamburg, Humberside, Le Havre, Liverpool, London, Rotterdam, or Teesside.

There have been mounting worries that speculators have been distorting the cocoa market in recent weeks, with brokers writing a letter of protest to Liffe earlier this month.

Barbara Crowther, a spokesman at the Fairtrade Foundation, said that no farmers in West Africa would benefit from the higher prices. She said: “This speculation only serves to increase volatility and uncertainty. Part of the problems in rent years have been the lack of investment in improving cocoa farms. But the farmers have already been paid a set price – none of this money will filter down to them.”