Gerald Metals letter

1. Dear All,
As you know there was an article written in French by a journalist (Sylvain Besson –
(https://muckrack.com/sylvain-besson/articles
/ https://www.letemps.ch/auteur/221)from Le Temps who was able to obtain
confidential information to try and create a story in order to sensationalize and twist
information into an article. As many of our stakeholders are aware, we have been
dealing with an onslaught of negative articles from various websites and press with
highly inaccurate, false, and misleading information with the intent to persuade our
stakeholders that Gerald, myself, and others from the executive management team
have committed some sort of wrong doing, illegal activities or that the Group is under
some tremendous financial stress. This has been primarily driven by a counterpart
who owed the Group more than US$50 million and was refusing to pay, even after
we had won an arbitration award enforcing our guarantees. I believe that we have
made people aware that all of the allegations, statements, and misinformation is
false and those that know our Group and me personally know the information cannot
be correct in any way shape or form.
In addition to the above referenced publication, we have been receiving numerous
requests from reputable mainstream newspapers who have been provided with
inaccurate and misleading information about Gerald from nefarious individuals who
want to force the Group to discontinue its legal proceedings to collect the material
sums of money that are rightfully owed to Gerald.
Normally, we do not respond to the press when they are inquiring into our operations
and businesses as it generally does not benefit anyone and the information often
ends up being twisted. However, some of the publications who contacted us were
certain that the information they had obtained was accurate and believed that people
should be aware. For example, I had one highly reputable investigative journalist
contact Gerald and specifically say they had proof that the president’s daughter in
Sierra Leone owns 20% of our company (SL Mining). He held documents that
appeared to be legitimate official documents, proving that Gerald had given a piece
of the project company to the president’s daughter. As such accusations were false,
detrimental to me and Gerald, and the journalist was going to write a story based on
this fraudulent information, I personally took the time to prove that the information
was false and subsequently he did not proceed to write the article. As you are

2. aware, the Group has had to defend itself against market rumors, false accusations,
false publications, and false information over the past 12 – 18 months due to the
arbitration we had started and eventually won.
To specifically address the Le Temps article, I had to personally spend hours
answering questions and proving that the information the reporter obtained from
people was inaccurate, false and misleading, and as a result I was able to have him
eliminate most of this from the article. However, he let me know that he had obtained
our RCF presentations, quarterly management letters, and spoke to one or more ex-
employees of GMSA (his credible sources) who had confirmed certain information.
He advised that the people of Geneva region (his readers) like to read this sort of
sensationalized news so he would continue to print his article regardless, but agreed
to eliminate much of the completely erroneous information he was going to print. I
have included a link to the article below.
Sylvain Besson refused to allow me to read the article prior to its printing, and would
not give me context of what he was going to print but requested that I comment to
his specific questions or he would state the company would not comment. This is
why the article has me commenting at times, however my answers may have been
taken out of context. For the benefit of the stakeholders, I will comment on each part
of the article so that the Group’s position is clear as to anything that was printed or
stated.
His article as written is in the attached link.
https://www.letemps.ch/economie/2018/02/01/morges-tempete-rois-metal
In addition, there were various other web articles that printed over the past weekend
which took the false information and twisted stories of Le Temps to sensationalize
things. Those that are familiar with Gerald will know that the information is false,
inaccurate, and written to put additional pressure on Gerald for the same reasons as
already stated. I have included two of the links below which I’m referring to.
https://jacquessimon506.wordpress.com/
https://jacquessimon506.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/traders-or-commodity-finance-
banks-part-xiii-gerald-metals-tales-or-the-trader-is-facing-massive-losses/
It’s unfortunate that counterparties and ex-employees would cooperate on such a
smear campaign of Gerald, but as our operations, financials, market position, and
legal position will continue to materially improve in 2018, they are trying to discredit
Gerald with hopes they may have a negative impact on us.
We will be sending the same or similar email to all our RCF lenders.
Please let me know if you have any further questions,
Craig Dean
CEO