Maktari is "Gold Hand" the international off market gold trader, who many believe can control the price of gold along with his billionaire clients. Many have gone on the internet with their fears that these enormously wealthy and ambitious traders are manipulating the market to the $1200 level, only to pull the market floor out from under gold later in 2008. Maktari comments candidly as he can on these perceptions of himself and his clients.
Maktari is the single name he uses. He lives discreetly in London and not much is known about the thirty-one year old gold trader except for two things. He has a very checkered past and in recent years he has brokered many major metric ton gold deals for wealthy Saudi and Dubai interests. Bankers in the know comment that Maktari is in on most large off market gold deals. In November of 2007 he entered into a $12 billion three year gold purchasing agreement with a Saudi client. He also works in India and has let it be known that he is currently looking forward to working with Yemen and Russian clients. He plans to broadly expand, using his current business to advise and represent other clients who are new to the international gold market. But he sees the gold market as just the beginning of an emerging far larger physical commodities market. His credibility with a well connected international network, has given him the time and resources to study the future of physical commodity trading. He is now shaping an ambitious business plan to eventually migrate from gold to oil with the long term goal of establishing the world's first physical commodities exchange, in Dubai, Saudi Arabia or London. Given his success to date, these nascent ideas may shape the way these markets develop over the next decades.
With this success came notoriety and critics. Some have gone public over the past year on the internet claiming that he and his Middle Eastern clients have the ability to fix world gold prices. And moreover they believe that Maktari and friends are planning to use it ruthlessly later this year. With these concerns in mind I contacted Maktari in London. I have interviewed Maktari several times, and he has given me an exclusive. The reasons stated for the exclusive interview now are two fold. Firstly he is concerned by the impact the internet comments are having on his business and reputation. "I want to go public and clear things up." And secondly, he is concerned about his family's privacy. "While I have had many journalist ask for interviews, I have until now refused. I am a private person with a young family and a nervous streak about meeting people and wanted to do it with someone based outside of Europe, mainly on the telephone."
Maktari's biography reads like a 21st Century Dickens revival novel. His earlier years as an orphan and criminal street urchin are straight out of Oliver Twist. His rise ten years after his from prison release, to a leading multimillionaire international gold trader, is almost near future science fiction. It could only have happened in the era that gave us Barack Obama, where communications and travel technology seem to have the capacity to reinvent time, space and circumstance. While not academically qualified and entirely self-taught, he is doing very well. He mocks established brokers as, "Just that—broke." It is estimated that anyone of his major metric ton deals last year could have netted him a $25 million commission.
He is willing to comment on his relationship with the Saudis, without stating names or amounts. As for the suggestion that they can and will control the gold markets, he phlegmatically replies that all commodity markets are influenced by major players, and it would be naive to think that the gold market is any different. He will not comment on whether there is any truth in the rumour that $1200 may be the intended ceiling and that a major drop in price will be orchestrated later in 2008. However, while refusing to comment on market speculation theories, he is very clear that he shares the belief that there will be a ceiling between $1200 and $1500 and that a 2008 market correction is certainly in the cards. Whether this comment is candid or self-serving is anyone's guess.
The danger and bad luck that haunted his earlier life have left him a modest and giving man by all accounts. He contributes generously to homeless organizations and other charities and is well known in business and personal life for his courtesy. "There are thoughts I have everyday that shape the humility I accept. Turning to see my mother gone and knowing I might never see her again. My first night in jail. These will always be with me. I give generously, but anonymously, because I do not want people to see this as a prestige act. I give because homelessness can happen to anyone."
Maktari is highly protective of his young family, and speaks confidently about his new future as an innovative commodities trader. He regrets his deeply troubled youth with the detachment and determination of man intent on putting an axe through his past mistakes. Sentenced at seventeen for drug and firearms offences he served four years in UK prisons. While his second business, cell phone distribution was less dangerous it had its own liabilities. His success was cut short when some of his customer were convicted of tax evasion and his own assets were seized. He asserts that he is not now under investigation or being prosecuted. Many Maktari observers are simply astounded to see him bounce back again. Even one of his detractors commented, "The man must have a skin as thick as a whale." Maktari seems as baffled as anyone by his temerity and seemingly guileless guile. "I got into cell phones with five phones nobody would buy. A one kilogram gold deal got me eventually to the Saudis."
Whether Maktari is once again up to mischief or living down past mistakes for the sake of future rewards, his thoughts about off market gold prices are clearly of interest to many. As Maktari openly points out, "It is to my advantage to see the price go up. It improves my business." That being said, he is equally clear that in his view the price will drop substantially later in 2008. He adds that he has been unusually prescient in his trading predictions. Where does this insight come from? He emphasizes that he has little insider knowledge of his clients objectives, and that his motivation in openly accessing market potential, is to establish himself as an honest broker with an eye to profiting from future commodities trading activities.
What one thinks of Maktari's comments on the gold market is a matter of opinion. But opinions are, as they say, what makes a market work.
John Graham has been writing for over 20 years on business and finance as a journalist and author for some of the most established publishers internationally. He owns no equities or derivatives nor does he trade in precious metals. This article will include quotation from other sources, some of whom will be contacts from his ongoing research for a book on the current gold and mining boom.
