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Is the idea of giving ordinary Somalilanders and the diaspora a simple, Sharia-compliant way to buy, store and sell physical gold from a phone a viable and much-needed product? The answer is a resounding Yes. Gold carries deep cultural weight across the Horn of Africa and the Gulf: savings, dowry, a hedge against inflation, wealth you can carry. An app that lets people buy it in small amounts, hold it securely and sell it when they need to would fill a real gap.
But should you put your money into this app? Is it a legitimate platform, or another venture that borrows community trust while leaving the hardest questions unanswered? Is your money safe? And can you trust them?
Somaliland Chronicle spent several months examining Simodi Gold’s corporate trail, its licences, its app, its Dubai launch, and what its chief executive told Somali-speaking audiences on camera. On August 28, five days after the launch, we put detailed questions to the company. It has not answered them. Instead, over the two months that followed, its website and terms were quietly rewritten. The gold that was “allocated in your name” is now “pooled.” The “daily independent audits” are gone. The promise that you could sell “immediately, no waiting, no delays” has become a contract that guarantees nothing. And if any of it goes wrong, a saver who paid from a phone in Hargeisa must go to a court in Dubai to ask for it back.
This week Simodi brought the product home, with a second launch in Hargeisa, amid talk that the company may soon offer shares to the public.
When we peeled away the family name, the glitzy Dubai unveiling and the wall-to-wall social media coverage, here is what we found.
The Family Brand and the New Product
Siimoodi Group is real, longstanding and well known in Somaliland. By the company’s own account, it began in 1988, when Mohamed Osman Bulale supported his wife, Amina Jama Ahmed, in setting up a market table in Borama, selling jewellery and buying scrap gold with one of the only scales among the town’s traders. The business grew into Siimoodi Jewellery Trading in Dubai’s Deira Gold Souk, and later into mineral exploration and emerald mining in Awdal. This according to a website called simodiemeralds.com.
In the company’s telling, Simodi Gold is the digital extension of that legacy: an app that lets ordinary savers buy 24-karat gold from half a gram, watch its value in real time, and sell it back. It was unveiled in Dubai on August 23, 2026.
The man behind it is Abdallah Mohamed Osman, an astute businessman with a showman’s flair, and a habit of opening companies in Dubai that do not last. The records list him as the manager of the company that holds Simodi’s license. They also list him as manager of two earlier companies, both now closed, one of them shut down by the authority itself.
The underlying idea is sound. The family is real. The question is whether this particular product matches what was promised when it was sold to the public.
Who Was in the Room
The Dubai launch was built to impress, and it did. Somaliland Chronicle reviewed video of the event. In the room were former President Dahir Riyale Kahin; the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Abdirahman Dahir Adan (Bakaal); the president’s economic adviser, Dr. Abdirahman Duale Beyle; Telesom chief executive Abdikarim Mohamed Eid; and executives of Dahabshiil.
No company could buy a better backdrop. A saver in Hargeisa or Minneapolis who sees a former president, a sitting minister, a presidential adviser and senior figures from Telesom and Dahabshiil gathered around a gold app will draw the obvious conclusion: the people who would know have looked this over, and it is safe.
Nothing supports that conclusion. None of these figures is a regulator. None, as far as we can establish, has inspected Simodi’s vault or seen its accounts. None has publicly vouched for the product, and we are not suggesting that any of them did, or that any holds a stake in it. We found no official statement about the event from any of their offices. Somaliland Chronicle did not contact them before publication; our questions are for the company that invited them.
Prominent people attend launches as a courtesy. But a guest list like this turns courtesy into trust, and trust into deposits. That is the danger when public officials lend their presence to a private sales event. To an inexperienced investor, a foreign minister in the room looks like the government’s stamp of approval, and the chief executive of Telesom looks like the industry’s. At best, it is a conflict of interest waiting to happen: these are the officials who may one day have to regulate this company, or answer for it. At worst, if the venture does not pan out, the damage will not stop at Simodi. It will land on the government whose officials sat in the room.
This publication has made the point before. In 2018 we reported that Boodhari Mills put “a parade of government officials” in front of investors, among them the then president’s economic adviser, and warned that any trouble with the business would be linked to his government. Eight years on, a presidential economic adviser was once again in the room. Officials are free to attend what they like. They should know what their attendance is being used to sell.
The presence of Telesom and Dahabshiil has a simpler explanation, and raises a question of its own. The app accepts ZAAD and eDahab, the mobile-money services those companies run. Accepting a payment method is not a partnership. Whether anything more exists between Simodi and either company, we do not know. We asked Osman.
What Osman Told the Cameras
Around the launch, Osman gave two long Somali-language interviews to MM Somali TV, one of about 18 minutes and one of about 25. The interviewer was Mohamed Abdi Mohamed, known as Ilig, the channel’s chairman and owner, who attended the Dubai event in person. One is titled, in translation, “Simodi Gold is an app you can invest with.” The other, “The gold business opportunities of Simodi Gold.” They are the clearest record of what Somali-speaking savers were told. The quotations below are our translations.
It was sold as an investment, and sold to Somalis. Osman opens by calling it “a Somali application in which a person can invest in gold.” Asked about people abroad, he speaks of buyers in “Africa, Borama,” and of customers in “Somaliland, Ethiopia.”
Your gold is a trust. Asked whether the product follows Sharia, he says the customer’s gold is amana, held in trust. “The gold is not sold to anyone else. The company does not use customers’ gold.”
It is audited. “A big international company does the audit,” he says, “every three to six months.” He does not name it.
Selling is instant. “The process is fast. It becomes instant.” Elsewhere: “under three seconds,” with the money “coming back to you quickly.”
You can pay with mobile money. “Even mobile money can be used: ZAAD, eDahab.”
You cannot lose the way you lose in forex. Ilig raises the comparison himself, more than once: how is this different from forex and crypto? Osman’s answer is always the same. Forex is digital, and “you can lose in it.” This is physical gold. “If the price goes up, you profit. If it goes down, you still have your gold.” When Ilig says many people are afraid of losing their money, Osman replies that the app is “trending.”
In fairness, Osman does say in the longer interview that “profit and loss are possible.” He also says plainly that physical delivery is available only inside the UAE, and that for customers elsewhere the gold stays in a vault in Dubai.
But notice what the forex answer leaves out. The risk a saver runs here is not the gold price. It is whether the company holding the gold actually has it, and can hand it over when asked. That is the risk that has ruined people in scheme after scheme. It is never raised, and Ilig, a guest at the event he was covering, does not press.
There are additionally videos by various bloggers that have promoted the venture, most notably one with the title: A Somali Millionaire: How He Made Millions.
A Quiet Rewrite
Now compare what was said with what is written.
Until at least October 10, 2026, when the Internet Archive captured it, Simodi’s website made the same kind of promises Mr. Osman made on camera. Then the site was rebuilt. Its own records show the homepage last modified on October 27, the fee and policy pages on October 30, and new Terms and Conditions taking effect on November 5.
The two versions read like two different products.
| Old website (to October) | Terms and website now | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose gold? | “Securely allocated in your name”; each bar “individually assayed, uniquely identifiable” | “Customer holdings are maintained on a pooled basis” |
| Audits | “Daily independent audits” | Audits “may” be carried out. No auditor named |
| Insurance | “Completely insured against theft, damage, or loss, for as long as you hold them” | Cover “may not cover all losses” |
| Selling | “Liquidate… immediately… no waiting, no delays” | No guarantee of “liquidity” or “redemption timelines”; Simodi “may reject or delay” a sale |
| Who can use it | “UAE residents and international users” | “Accessible across” the seven emirates |
| Returns | A sample app screen showing “+15.4% Returns This year,” with no disclaimer | Figure removed; the sample is now marked “Illustrative example only – not actual or guaranteed performance” |
The first row matters most. Allocated gold belongs to a named customer. Pooled gold is a share of a common stock. If the company fails, that difference decides what a saver actually owns, and Simodi’s answer has reversed. Osman said amana. The website said “allocated in your name.” The contract now says “pooled,” and contains no trust or segregation language at all. It says customer metal is “not intended” to be lent or pledged, “except where… separately agreed with the user.”
Count the audit stories, too. On camera: every three to six months, by a big international company. On the old website: daily. In the terms: maybe. No auditor has been named in any of the three.
Every one of these changes runs in the same direction: less owed to the customer, more protection for the company. Not one of them gives the saver something the launch did not already promise.
A company is entitled to tighten its legal language. But two points follow. First, every customer who signed up between August and November did so on the earlier promises, and the new terms do not say which version governs their gold. Second, the timing. Our questions went to Osman on August 28. They asked who audits the gold, who insures it, whether customers’ gold is allocated or pooled, and how instant selling works. The old website was still live on October 10. By November 5 the rewrite was complete, and it touches each of those points. We cannot say our questions caused it. But the sequence is a matter of record: the questions were asked, the public answers changed, and the company has not explained why, to us or, as far as we can find, to its customers.
So What, Exactly, Is Simodi Gold?
Ask the simplest question there is: what kind of business is this? Simodi has given at least five answers.
To Apple, it is a jewellery shop. The company legally responsible for the app is Siimoodi Jewellery Trading LLC, the family’s store in the Gold Souk. To Dubai’s free-zone authority, it is a bullion trader: Simodi Gold FZCO, licensed to buy and sell metal. To its customers, it is a vault. It keeps their gold, free of charge, and its chief executive calls that gold a trust. To Somali viewers, it is an investment, “an app you can invest with,” and its own website still signs off as “a trusted platform for digital gold and silver investments.” And inside the app, it is something closer to a trading and payments service: a “Simodi Gold Wallet” you can fund with mobile money, prices that move by the second, and gold you can “transfer or gift” to another user.
It has not settled on a name, either. The licence says Simodi Gold FZCO. Until recently its own terms said “Simodi Bullion FZCO,” a company that does not appear on the register. Apple’s copyright line says “Simodi Gold Trading LLC.”
These are not five descriptions of one thing. They are five different businesses, and each answers to a different rulebook. A shop that sells you a gold bar owes you a gold bar, and the deal is done. A company that keeps your gold, pools it with everyone else’s, holds your cash in a wallet and carries it across a border owes you a great deal more, and in most countries would need a great deal more than a trading licence to do it.
Simodi knows exactly where those lines are, because its own documents walk around every one of them. Its Google Play listing says it is “not a bank, investment fund, e-money provider, or digital currency issuer.” Its new terms go further. The balances in a customer’s account, they say, are not “bank deposits, e-money, stored-value balances, securities, fund units.”
Read that list again. It names every category a financial regulator supervises, and declares Simodi to be none of them. What the terms never say is what the money in a Simodi Gold Wallet is, where it is kept, or in whose name.
They do not even say who is on the other side of the trade. When you buy a gram, the contract does not say who sold it to you. When you sell, it does not say who is buying. Simodi describes itself only as providing “execution, storage, tracking, redemption, and operational services.” The one fact every customer of every gold dealer on earth is entitled to know, who am I dealing with, is missing from the contract.
Simodi cannot be an investment when it is selling and a gold shop when it is regulated. It has taken a trader’s licence and made an investment house’s promises. Until it says plainly which business it is in, no customer can know which rules, if any, stand between them and their gold.
A Licence to Trade, Not to Hold Your Savings
So which of the five does its licence cover? One.
Dubai Multi Commodities Centre licence DMCC-996420 belongs to Simodi Gold FZCO, with Osman as manager. When we checked the register in late August it was active. Its listed expiry date was October 27, 2026. We were unable to confirm before publication whether it has been renewed.
Read what the licence is for: “Non-Manufactured Precious Metal Trading.” It is the licence any gold trader in the zone holds. DMCC is a free-zone authority, not a financial regulator. It sets no capital requirements, runs no compensation scheme and does not supervise investment products. Simodi does not appear on the UAE Central Bank’s register of licensed financial institutions, and we found no listing with the UAE’s securities regulator.
None of that stopped the old website from answering the question “Is Simodi licensed and regulated?” with a flat “Yes.”
One more entry in the register deserves an answer. Osman previously managed two DMCC companies named Sincere Siimoodi Minerals. One was dissolved in the ordinary way. The other, licence DMCC-857845, is marked “Terminated by Authority.” We do not know why, and we are not speculating. We asked.
A Somali Product on UAE Paper
There is one more mismatch. On camera, this is a Somali product, payable by ZAAD and eDahab, for people in Borama and beyond. The app’s own update history records mobile money being added in July. Apple’s App Store groups it with Dahabshiil, Hormuud and Salaam Bank apps.
On paper, it is something else. The website describes a service “accessible across” the seven emirates, opened with an Emirates ID or passport, paying out to a bank account in the customer’s name. The words ZAAD, eDahab and mobile money do not appear anywhere on the website or in the terms. Money moving from a mobile wallet in Hargeisa to a gold account in Dubai, and back, is a cross-border payment. Nothing Simodi has published explains who carries it, or under what licence.
Nor is the app available everywhere the diaspora lives. Our reporter in the United States could not download it.
Now Hargeisa, and Talk of an IPO
This week, Simodi launched the app a second time, in Hargeisa, under a banner reading “Simodi App Launch: Somaliland Chapter.”
Set that beside the contract. The terms that took effect on November 5 describe a service for the seven emirates, with payouts to a bank account and no mention of mobile money. Days later, the same company stood in Hargeisa selling the same app to Somalilanders. Whatever the paperwork says, Simodi knows exactly who its customers are.
The Hargeisa launch brought something new: talk, circulating on social media, that Simodi Gold is expected to pursue an initial public offering, which would make it the first Somaliland company to be listed and traded on a stock exchange. The claim comes with no detail on who expects this, on which exchange, or when. Somaliland Chronicle has not been able to confirm it, and we have found no announcement from Simodi itself.
If it is true, it raises more questions than it settles. An IPO is the most heavily scrutinised step a company can take. It requires a prospectus, audited accounts and a securities regulator’s approval. Those are precisely the things Simodi has not produced for the gold it already holds: no named auditor, no published accounts, no financial regulator. And which company would be listed? The year-old free-zone trader that holds the licence, or the family jewellery business that Apple lists as responsible for the app?
Nor is it clear where such a listing could happen. Somaliland has no stock exchange and no securities regulator. This publication has been here before. In 2021, when Somtel sold shares to the public at $100 each, we reported that buyers were given no valuation, no financial statements and no count of the shares on offer, under investment laws that had not yet been passed.
If it is not true, the talk still does its work. A saver who believes a company is about to go public will trust it with more money today. Either way, Somalilanders may soon be asked to hand Simodi their savings twice: once for gold they cannot see, and again for shares in the company that says it is holding it.
Fees, Terms, and What Happens If It Fails
Simodi’s fee schedule lists storage as free and physical redemption as free. The one number that matters, the spread between the price at which it sells you gold and the price at which it buys it back, is given only as “as displayed.” No percentage is published. Vaults, insurance and auditors cost money. Either an undisclosed spread pays for them, or they are not being provided as described.
No deposit insurance applies. No investor compensation scheme applies. Insurance against theft or fire does not cover the risk that matters most: a company that does not hold enough gold for what it owes.
Pay From Hargeisa in Minutes. Sue in Dubai, If You Can.
Here is the part of the contract no one mentioned on stage.
Simodi has made it remarkably easy for a Somalilander to hand over money. Download the app, upload a passport, pay with ZAAD or eDahab. Its chief executive says the whole thing takes minutes. He gave his interviews in Somali, to a Somali channel, for a Somali audience.
Getting that money back if something goes wrong is another matter. The terms, written in English, send every dispute to “the competent courts of Dubai,” under UAE law. Not Hargeisa. Not Borama, where the family business began and where its name carries the trust this product is trading on.
Consider what that means for a teacher in Borama with 20 grams in the app, or a taxi driver in Minneapolis with 50. To bring a claim, each would need a lawyer licensed in the UAE, in a court system that conducts its business in Arabic, in a country they may not be able to travel to, at a cost that would swallow the savings in dispute many times over. And if they somehow got there, they would meet the clause that caps Simodi’s liability at the lowest of three figures, one of which is the fees the customer paid in the previous six months. For a product advertised as free, that figure could be close to zero.
The same terms let Simodi suspend, freeze or close any account.
So the arrangement is this. The marketing comes to you, in your language, on your phone, through your mobile wallet. The accountability stays in Dubai, in a foreign court, in a foreign language, behind a liability cap. A company confident in its product does not need to put its customers’ only remedy beyond their reach. We asked Osman whether Simodi chose Dubai’s courts knowing that almost none of its Somaliland customers could ever use them. That question, like the others, [went unanswered].
Are There Laws to Protect These Investors?
As with Boodhari Mills in 2018, the answer remains largely no.
Boodhari Mills offered the diaspora a compelling story, a flour mill Somaliland genuinely needed, wrapped in high projected returns, glossy fundraising events and appeals to patriotism. Our reporting at the time found thin financial disclosure and a Canadian registration that gave investors almost no protection. A plant was eventually built. Years later the Canadian entity had been dissolved, the business was under financial pressure, and it was again seeking fresh money.
The lesson carries over. A DMCC licence protects a trade name and an address. It does not protect a saver’s money. Somaliland’s own consumer and investor protections lag far behind the pace at which products like this are launched at its people. Other countries have noticed the gap: in November 2025 India’s securities regulator warned the public that digital gold sold through apps falls outside its rules and carries no investor protection. Until a regulator, in the UAE or anywhere else, actually supervises how Simodi holds its customers’ gold, the burden of checking falls entirely on the customer.
The Questions Simodi Must Answer
- Which business is Simodi in: a shop, a trader, a vault, an investment platform or a payments service? And which regulator has approved it to do that?
- When a customer buys or sells, who is on the other side of the trade?
- Where is the cash in the Simodi Gold Wallet held, and in whose name?
- Who audits the gold, and where is the latest report?
- Who operates the vault, and who insures it?
- Is customers’ gold legally theirs if the company fails, now that it is “pooled”?
- What is the spread, as a percentage?
- Why were the website and terms rewritten, were customers told, and which terms govern gold bought before November 5?
- Who carries money between ZAAD or eDahab and Dubai, and under what licence?
- Why must a customer in Hargeisa sue in Dubai? Will Simodi answer to Somaliland’s courts for the money it takes from Somaliland’s people?
- Has licence DMCC-996420 been renewed?
- Why did DMCC terminate licence DMCC-857845?
- What, beyond payments, is the relationship with Telesom and Dahabshiil?
- Is Simodi planning to sell shares to the public? Which company, on which exchange, under which regulator, and with whose audited accounts?
Is Simodi Gold a scam? We cannot tell you that it is. Simodi has made sure that no one outside the company can tell you that it is not. The gold may be in the vault, every gram of it. But there is no named auditor to say so, no named vault to check, no named insurer to call, and no regulator watching. There is a family name, a gala, a guest list, and a contract rewritten to promise less.
Legitimate businesses answer questions. This one changed its website.
Before you send a dollar from your ZAAD or eDahab wallet, ask Simodi for the answers above, in writing. If you do not get them, you have your answer.
Somaliland Chronicle sent detailed written questions to Simodi Gold and Mr. Osman in August 2026, shortly after the Dubai launch. They covered the company’s legal structure, its regulators, its audits and vaults, and its licensing history. Three months later, as this article went to publication, neither the company nor Mr. Osman had replied. Our offer stands: we will publish their answers in full if they respond.
Notice: This is an article by Somaliland Chronicle. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Under this license, all reprints and non-commercial distribution of this work is permitted.