The two companies have rejected the charges.

News of the filing comes during the first week of a trial in London's High Court of a similar case in which French bank Natixis is suing commodities broker Marex Spectron for $32 million.

Many of the details in the two cases are similar. One of two Hong Kong companies named in the Natixis/Marex suit - Come Harvest Holdings Ltd (CHH) - is also a defendant in the ED&F Man case.

Judge Simon Bryan told the court in the Natixis/Marex trial on Tuesday he had received an email from lawyers for CHH and Mega Wealth International Trading Ltd - the other defendant in the ED&F Man suit.

Bryan said those lawyers were concerned that the proceedings in the Natixis/Marex case would have an impact on their clients since much of the background was the same in the two cases.

CHH is mentioned in the Natixis/Marex case, but is not a party to the action. None of the parties in the Natixis/Marex case have disputed that the receipts were fraudulent but no accusation has been made as to who faked them.

Reuters has not been able to contact CHH or Mega Wealth for comment, but both have denied responsibility for the alleged fraud in court papers filed in the ED&F case.

The receipts were part of a repurchase agreement, arranged by ED&F Man between Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and the Hong Kong firms.

ANZ is not a party to ED&F Man's lawsuit in UK courts, but in June 2017, it filed papers asking the U.S. District Court in San Francisco to allow it to interview U.S. witnesses about the alleged fraud.

ED&F Man paid $117.3 million to CHH and $167.2 million to Mega Wealth for nickel stored in Asian warehouses, but receipts the two firms provided were forgeries, lawyers for the broker said in court documents.

The two Hong Kong firms knew or had sufficient reason to suspect that the receipts were forged, those documents alleged.

The two companies said they had no knowledge that the receipts were fake, a defence filing showed.

The practice of using metal as collateral in warehouse repo deals has come under increasing scrutiny since a $3 billion fraud four years ago at Qingdao port in China, which led to a $440 million fine for the firm involved, Dezheng Resources, and a 23-year jail sentence for its chairman.

(Reporting by Eric Onstad; Editing by Dale Hudson)

By Eric Onstad