A valid prospective Buyer respondent will verify the Seller’s bona fides and the certificate or safekeeping receipt numbers. This verification serves two purposes:
1) Determine if the buyer can legally transact with the Seller, and2) Verify the provenance of gold offered. Only legally acquired gold presently held with clear and transferable title may be legally bought and sold. If these pre-conditions are met, a valid Buyer may elect to respond. Absent these pre-conditions, there will be no response.
The provenance, that is how the gold was acquired and its chain of custody, is of greater importance than the gold’s assay as later proven. This means that all gold offered for sale has a history. That history must be verified and found genuine and legally acceptable. A failure to conduct this preliminary due diligence is not only irrational and a violation of buyers’ policy and procedures, it is also illegal. The various international and national anti-terrorism, anti-money laundering, anti-fraud, and banking laws and regulations all demand that Buyers actively validate the Seller’s background as a condition precedent to transactions. In practice, they are preconditions to entering into negotiations.