Thursday, December 05, 2020
The main objective of this Ghana mission was three-fold:
To vet a new supplier, with a view to concluding a buy-sell transaction for one of our Dubai mandated buyer clients;
To connect ICT principals in person with some prominent political figures in-country, with whom we’d discussed our ability to deliver a State House level humanitarian project that would enable the local government to monetise in-ground assets, without the need to be exploited by mineral off-take deals that we believe are usury (at best one-sided) and help eliminate ‘bad actors’ and scammers from the domestic gold value chain;
To explore potential JV opportunities with both established co-operative miners who already mine under license but need help with safe mechanisation and mining best practices, but also develop our plans to create JV partnerships with mining permit owners who have local knowledge but lack the start-up capital, resources or expertise to begin extraction.
The trip culminated in mixed emotions: we successfully planted the seeds for future extraction partnerships and conducted a small hand-carry to Dubai but, sadly, exposed a fraudster in the form of an unscrupulous shipping agency that neglected their contractual obligations and forced us to instigate legal and criminal actions against them.
We will be taking advice from both legal counsel and international law enforcement agencies about creating a list of known scammers, so that other reputable buyers and sellers can learn from our experiences, whilst reporting the culprits to the relevant in-country authorities. Meanwhile, we will continue to employ a zero-tolerance policy towards disreputable companies and individuals in the sector.