Juba Recasts Sudanese Ingots as South Sudanese, and Every Emirati Cargo Flight Rests on an Unnamed Source

Sudan Tribune reported from Juba on 6 August, quoting a merchant identified only as “F.A.” with initials changed at his request, that gold arrives in the South Sudanese capital as raw, unrefined ingots — by truckload and by motorcycle — through unmonitored corridors from the mines of Darfur and South Kordofan. Middlemen pay cash in US dollars at prices well above the Central Bank of Sudan’s official rate. Traders resmelt, recast and consolidate the metal, and falsified paperwork then declares it mined locally in Equatoria or Western Bahr el Ghazal. It is air-freighted from Juba to the UAE and international refineries without legal obstacles. Sudan Tribune calls this a shift from direct smuggling to “value chain re-engineering and origin laundering.” The historical anchor: after seizing the Jebel Amer mine in 2017, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo directed profits to roughly 50 RSF-affiliated companies.

The upstream event is the Financial Times investigation by William Wallis and Peter Andringa, published on or about 4 August, which reported that the RSF seized the state-owned Khartoum gold refinery and raided the Central Bank of Sudan, taking at least 1.5 tonnes of bullion worth $100 million at the time plus jewellery from commercial bank vaults. An eyewitness account, corroborated by three sources familiar with the event, put the gold across the borders into Chad and South Sudan and onward from Juba International Airport to the UAE. The RSF denies involvement and the FT carries the caveat that the details of the theft are contested. An unnamed insider told the FT: “The Emiratis sent cargo planes, sometimes civilian, sometimes military, to come and ship the gold.” An Emirati official told the FT the Sudan–UAE gold trade reached just over $1 billion in 2025.

Assessment: Sudan Tribune’s “informed source” describing Emirati cargo flights reads as independent confirmation of the FT insider. It may not be — the two could draw on the same underlying reporting, and stacking them is how a single anonymous claim becomes conventional wisdom. Note also which half is better established: both outlets present the onward routing more firmly than the theft itself, which the RSF denies. The denominator argument is Abu Dhabi’s, and it is on the record — the UAE trade ministry said in November that 2024 gold imports from Sudan were $1.97bn, 1.06% of $186bn transiting the country. Against that, Swissaid put direct UAE imports from Sudan at 29 tonnes in 2024 against 17 in 2023, plus 27 via Egypt, 18 via Chad and 9 via Libya.