Case studies: how financed deals actually go

The situation

A Dubai-based trading company had identified a licensed dealer in Kenema offering recurring supply of gold dust. The dealer's terms were standard for the region — payment for goods, duties and freight before export — and the buyer, having been burned once before in another country, refused to wire anything upfront. The deal was stuck.

What we did

After the buyer passed KYC and confidential proof-of-funds verification, our Freetown team went to work on the seller: licence confirmed directly with the National Minerals Agency, trading history checked, and proof of product witnessed in person. The consignment was tested on calibrated equipment with the buyer's representative watching by video link — it assayed at 91.6%, consistent with the dealer's claim.

We then pre-financed the entire transaction: purchase payment against custody of the goods, valuation and royalties paid at the NMA, export documentation, insurance and air freight to Dubai. Our team remained inside the chain of custody from Kenema to aircraft.

The outcome

The consignment arrived in Dubai and the buyer's refinery assay matched the origin assay within tolerance. Settlement of the pre-financed amount plus our success fee followed within 48 hours, per the agreement.

The situation

The buyer came to us with a deal already in motion: a Conakry "dealer" with glossy documentation, a sample that had tested genuine in London, and 45 kg supposedly sitting in bonded storage. Price was attractive — about 18% under world spot — and the final step was an $86,000 payment for export tax, security escort and airline handling, to be wired to the seller's agent. The buyer wanted financing to cover that payment. We told him that if the deal was real, he wouldn't need to make that payment at all — we would pay legitimate charges directly to the authorities. He asked us to verify.

What we found

Every layer failed. The export licence number did not correspond to any licensed exporter when checked at source. The "bonded storage facility" existed as a building but had no connection to the seller and no record of any consignment. The tax invoice used a real office's letterhead with a non-existent reference format. And the genuine sample — the cornerstone of the buyer's confidence — proved nothing about 45 kg the seller refused to have tested under our supervision. When our local partner requested witnessed testing of the full consignment, the seller produced delays, then urgency, then a competing "Chinese buyer arriving Friday." Classic exit choreography.

The outcome

We declined the transaction in writing, walked the buyer through each fraudulent document, and reported the scheme through our local network. The buyer's only costs were verification expenses.

The situation

A refinery sourcing desk wanted dependable monthly volume from West Africa, but its compliance team — rightly — would not approve any origin flow without airtight licensing and a verifiable custody trail. Ghana's centralised GoldBod framework made it the natural fit: the rules are clear, and following them produces exactly the paper trail a refinery's compliance function needs.

What we did

Rather than financing one large purchase, we structured a program: a deliberately small first tranche to prove every link — licensed counterparty, official assay, export clearance, freight, destination assay, settlement — then stepped increases in volume with each clean cycle. We pre-finance each tranche's costs inside the regulated channel; the refinery settles per tranche after its own assay. Trust is built on completed cycles, not promises.

The outcome

The program is ongoing. Volumes have scaled from the proving tranche to a steady monthly flow, with the compliance file growing cleaner — not riskier — as it scales, because every tranche adds a fully documented cycle to the record.