An Australian and Dubai Trading Firm Promised to Buy Over a $1B in EN590, Diesel. Victim Says Mr. Karan and Mr. Rhys only Delivered Fake documents and Lies!

GM Commodities Trading (GMCT). presented fake bank accounts, invented storage facilities and forged corporate documents to an energy company in a scheme company official say was designed from the start to defraud.

By RNO investigative staff

Reporting from Sydney, Singapore and Dubai

May 4, 2026

SYDNEY — For eight months, GM Commodities Trading (GMCT). looked like the kind of counterparty a midsize energy trading company dreams of finding: well-capitalized, dual-registered in Australia and the United Arab Emirates, with a named banking relationship and detailed storage capacity at the ports of Terneuzen and Rotterdam.

Almost none of it was real.

According internal compliance documents and interviews with four individuals with direct knowledge of the matter, GMCT— incorporated in South Australia in June 2025 under Australian Company Number 664 316 167, and holding a registered address at IFZA Business Park in Dubai’s free-trade zone — provided fabricated banking credentials, fictitious storage facility records and forged company documents to (SGL)., a Western-based commodities trading firm, in connection with a proposed EN590 diesel agreement valued at an estimated $1 billion.

The company listed two directors: Rhys David Gebethner and Karan Maken with registered business address of IFZA Business Park P.O. Box 342001, Dubai U.A.E and 1 Hughes Street, Unley, SA 5061 Australia. Neither responded to requests for comment.

KEY FIGURES

‘Everything they gave us was invented’

The scheme began to unravel in 2026, when SGL’s compliance team attempted to independently verify GMCT’s stated tank farm relationship with their purported tank service agreement (TSR) and tank service receipts (TSR) — and found no account in the company’s name. These documents were fake and an executive of SGL, Dr. Angelito Salcedo Jr. stated, “these people are full of fake documents and Mr. Karan and Mr. Rhys and Joseph informed me that they had set aside “$100 million USD for this trade” they further informed Mr. Salcedo that they are “busy trading in Rotterdam and Jurong.” Mr. Salcedo Jr., SGL’s EVP and the executive who had introduced GMCT to his colleagues following a meeting with one of their representatives in the Philippines, said the discovery left him shaken.

“I vouched for these people. I brought them into our company. When I learned that everything they gave us was invented — not wrong, not outdated, but deliberately fabricated — I was devastated. And then I was furious.”

— Mr. Salcedo Jr., EVP.

“We found ourselves in a delicate position — one that required careful navigation of relationships we have spent years building. When the buyer approached us demanding pricing structures well below OPEC benchmarks, alarm bells went off immediately. In this industry, that kind of ask is rarely a sign of good faith. We have long-standing partnerships with BP and SOCAR — relationships built on trust, reliability, and mutual respect — and we were simply not prepared to put those on the line for a deal that hadn’t yet proven itself legitimate. So we did what any prudent operator would do: we began quietly exploring alternative supply channels. The goal was to find a path that could satisfy the buyer’s terms, if they turned out to be genuine, without ever exposing our core partners to unnecessary risk or reputational uncertainty. You protect what you’ve built. That’s not caution — that’s strategy. And in the energy sector, where a single misstep can cost you decades of goodwill, you learn very quickly that not every deal is worth chasing, and not every buyer is who they say they are.”

— SGL’s board statement.

The tank farms that were never there

Beyond the banking records, SGL had received detailed storage documentation from GMCT describing two bonded tank farm facilities: one operated by Kinder-Wald Storage, registered U.K. Company, and Ternuezen Terminal and Logistics in the Netherlands. Both documents included storage capacity figures, terminal codes and facility coordinates.

Investigators retained by SGL could find no evidence that either facility existed under those names or at the locations provided. When they searched Dutch trade registers and port authority records, neither operator appeared or were blacklisted.

“This was not sloppiness,” said a fraud examiner familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigative reporting remains active. “The documents were professionally formatted and internally consistent. The people who produced them understood exactly what a legitimate tank farm storage agreement looks like.”

The dissolution of Kinder-Wald’s United Kingdom-registered entity, filed just days after the initial irregularities were flagged internally at SGL, added a new dimension to the case. Mr. Salcedo said he was told about it by SGL’s team.

“When I heard that Kinder-Wald had filed to dissolved in the U.K. right after our compliance team started asking questions,” he said, “that told me this wasn’t a coincidence. Someone was covering their tracks.”

A legal exposure spanning three continents            

Legal experts consulted by The RNO said the alleged conduct could expose GMCT and their directors to criminal liability across multiple jurisdictions. In the United States, the federal wire fraud statute — 18 U.S.C. § 1343 — makes it a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison to use electronic communications to execute a scheme to defraud. Australia’s Criminal Code Act 1995 contains broadly analogous provisions, as does Singapore’s Penal Code.

The central legal question, experts said, would not be intent — which the volume and specificity of the fabricated documents would make straightforward to establish — but rather which jurisdiction would take primary authority over the prosecution.

“You do not accidentally produce a complete set of fake banking credentials, two fictitious storage facilities and a forged company information sheet,” said a former law enforcement person, who declined to be identified because she does not represent any party in the matter. “Every one of those documents required deliberate acts of fabrication. GMCT knew, or must have known, that what they were providing was false.”

“What they did was not a contractual dispute. It was a calculated criminal scheme. The people responsible for this belong in prison, and SGL will pursue every available legal remedy until they are held to account.”

— Mr. Salcedo Jr., speaking on behalf of SGL.

A company that has gone quiet

GMCT did not respond to multiple requests for comment sent by email and to its email address over a period of two weeks. The company’s website, which had listed offices in both countries and described a portfolio of crude oil and refined products trading, provided contact details which wer utilized for this article. Attempts to reach the company by telephone at the numbers listed on its corporate documents were unsuccessful.

ASIC records confirm the company was registered as a proprietary company limited by shares on June, 2025, in South Australia, with both directors appointed on the same date. The registration remained active as of this publication date, with a next review date of June, 2026.

SGL has referred the matter to regulators in Australia, Netherlands, Dubai, and the U.K and is pursuing civil remedies. Mr. Salcedo said the episode had prompted SGL to overhaul its counterparty due-diligence procedures, adding mandatory correspondent-bank verification and independent site confirmation for all storage claims.

“We thought we had done our checks,” he said quietly. “What we didn’t have was independent verification — and that is exactly the gap they were counting on.”