In 1492, when Christo­pher Colum­bus sailed amongst our is­lands, his crew ex­changed trin­kets, such as beads, hawk bells, and oth­er small items, for the gold jew­el­ry that the Taíno na­tives wore.

This fu­elled Colum­bus’ be­lief that he had found is­lands rich in gold which gave rise to the fa­ble of El Do­ra­do, the city of gold. The lust for gold re­sult­ed in many atroc­i­ties, suf­fer­ing, and deaths. This lust spans all eras. It now ap­pears that Bar­ba­di­ans are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing this.

The Bar­ba­dos To­day ed­i­to­r­i­al on 25.11.2024 re­ports an in­creas­ing prac­tice of for­eign­ers bar­ter­ing with na­tion­als, ex­chang­ing house­hold items and elec­tri­cal ap­pli­ances for gold jew­el­ry or pieces of bro­ken jew­el­ry.

It states, “The Span­ish-speak­ing men walk and dri­ve around ur­ban and rur­al dis­tricts with large flat-screen tele­vi­sions, ap­pli­ances, and oth­er items try­ing to per­suade peo­ple to part with their jew­el­ry in ex­change for the ap­pli­ances. There have been no re­ports of them of­fer­ing cash, but they ap­pear to be reap­ing suc­cess from their ex­changes. Cur­rent sta­tis­tics in­di­cate that gold is high­ly sought af­ter in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket, with long-term in­vestors pay­ing US$2 731.50 per ounce, while the spot price, or the price at which the pre­cious met­al is bought and sold, is present­ly at US$43.40 per ounce, and this fig­ure is con­stant­ly shift­ing.”

The ed­i­to­r­i­al men­tions Bar­ba­dos’ strict an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing rules re­sult­ing in the Gov­ern­ment clamp­ing down on the trad­ing of gold and oth­er met­als with the Pre­cious Met­als and Sec­ond-Hand Met­als Act of 2013, man­dat­ing in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies deal­ing with pre­cious met­als and sec­ond-hand met­als to have a li­cence and re­tain records.

“While we sus­pect that those non-Eng­lish-speak­ing traders may have found a loop­hole in the law by not of­fer­ing to buy but to barter, the same con­cerns that led to tight­en­ing of the rules with the 2013 act still ex­ist to­day, and they may be more omi­nous due to the in­creas­ing use of firearms in the com­mis­sion of crimes … Who is sup­ply­ing the men with the elec­tron­ics and oth­er items used in their trade? Will there be an amend­ment to the law to in­clude bar­ter­ing for gold? The oth­er point of in­ter­est is to whom are these men sell­ing the gold they are ac­cu­mu­lat­ing and is the gold stay­ing in Bar­ba­dos or ex­port­ed in bulk? Where is the fi­nal des­ti­na­tion, and who re­ceives the fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit?”

It ap­pears that the gold rush is here. Gio­van­ni Stauno­vo, a com­mod­i­ty an­a­lyst at UBS Glob­al Wealth, said the weak­en­ing US dol­lar, as well as strong de­mand from cen­tral banks (in­clud­ing the IMF), who have been adding gold to their re­serves due to con­cerns about the long-term glob­al econ­o­my, al­so wars in Ukraine and Gaza have fu­elled this.

Gold­bugs have pro­posed gold as a way to hedge against in­fla­tion, a safe-haven as­set. Some in­vestors hold phys­i­cal gold di­rect­ly as coins, bul­lion, or jew­el­ry; or in­di­rect­ly via mu­tu­al funds, ex­change-trad­ed funds, gold de­riv­a­tives, or gold-min­ing stocks.

Talks of a cash­less so­ci­ety may dri­ve peo­ple to buy some­thing tan­gi­ble. With in­creased de­mand, we must pre­pare for in­creas­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty to feed this lu­cra­tive cash-for-gold busi­ness. The pub­lic is tar­get­ed when they wear jew­el­ry and hous­es be­come bur­gled to har­vest gold. We still do not know if Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh’s be­ra is now adorn­ing a gang­ster lover’s wrist, re­designed in­to an­oth­er piece of jew­el­ry, or has left our shores.

The US Com­modi­ties Fu­tures Trad­ing Com­mis­sion is­sued a warn­ing about fraud­u­lent gold trans­ac­tions. Res­i­dents in Cal­i­for­nia were bom­bard­ed with months of ad­ver­tise­ments on ra­dio, tele­vi­sion, so­cial me­dia, and brochures pro­mot­ing the Ox­ford Gold Group, which promised to in­vest clients’ mon­ey in gold.

They told clients their as­sets would be de­posit­ed with Eq­ui­ty Trust Co, which spe­cialis­es in in­vest­ment ac­counts fo­cused on pre­cious met­als. Ear­li­er this year, hun­dreds of in­vestors re­ceived let­ters from Eq­ui­ty Trust in­di­cat­ing that their mon­ey di­rect­ed to Ox­ford Gold had not been prop­er­ly record­ed and no met­als pur­chased from Ox­ford Gold were de­liv­ered to their des­ig­nat­ed de­pos­i­to­ry.

They ad­vised peo­ple to con­tact Ox­ford Gold as they were no longer do­ing busi­ness with them. Well, Ox­ford Gold has now shut its doors and closed with­out a trace.

Their web­site and tele­phone are not op­er­a­tional. Gullible peo­ple, those with low IQ, men­tal health prob­lems, lone­li­ness, greed, and des­per­a­tion, and those with op­ti­mism bias may be­lieve that scams won’t hap­pen to them.

Even af­ter the scam, peo­ple come out of the side­lines and claim that they can re­cov­er as­sets. This may be an­oth­er scam, as they al­ways ask for more mon­ey. In T&T, chair­man of TTSEC Im­ti­az Ho­sein must be con­grat­u­lat­ed on the pub­lic warn­ing, two days ago, about a new in­vest­ment scam in our coun­try. Hope­ful­ly, mem­bers of the pub­lic can con­tact the TTSEC to as­sist in check­ing any gold in­vest­ments that seem too good to be true.