In Stilfontein, an ancient mining town in South Africa, neighbors no longer fear the void of abandoned tunnels, but to strangers who arrive in cars loaded with rifles. “A few days come, they buy tools, they disappear,” said a local merchant. They are not traditional miners. They are armed bands that dispute, underground, an increasingly valuable booty: gold. Similar scenes are repeated in the Forests of the Amazon, in the Colombian Cauca rivers or in the tunnels of the Peruvian Andes. What was artisanal gold fever has become a silent war. The precious metal that in London or Dubai represents refuge and financial stability, in the field is stained by mercury, blood and organized crime. Goldery Fever of the 21st Century. According to Reuters estimatesthe price of gold has tripled in the last decade and rose more than 25% only so far this year. On August 21, the ounce, a historical record was quoted around $ 3.331. Amid inflation, commercial wars and geopolitical tensions, investors seek in gold which always represented: security. But that fever does not translate only into bullion in vaults. It has also unleashed a metal race in the most fragile areas of the planet. The SWISSAID NGO has counted in a report that 435 tons of gold – about 31,000 million dollars – came out of contraband of Africa in 2022, twice as much before. In Peru, the first producer of South America, the regulatory authority itself calculated that 40% of last year’s gold exports were illegal. For its part, the UN He has warned that organized crime is already embedded in global gold supply chains. “The mafias are earning more money with gold than with cocaine,” has summarized for Financial Times Sasha Lezhnev, Anntry analyst. From the subsoil to the global market. A report for Financial Times He has detailed it quite accurately, since the illegal scheme is repeated: the metal leaves an Amazonian garimpo, an abandoned mine in South Africa or a site controlled by paramilitaries in Sudan; Cross borders by smuggling or with false licenses; He arrives in Hubs like Dubai, Switzerland or India; and once molten in standard bullions, it is integrated without friction to the international financial system. In Dubai, indicated as a “washing machine” of the world gold, it is enough to pay in cash to obtain refined bars with Emiratí seal. From there they re -export to Switzerland, London or Hong Kong. A merchant He has admitted it Non -Rodeos: “We are not going to buy gold. We acquire it in the wholesale market, we give the money and receive it. No one asks where it comes from.” Modus Operandi Global. On the one hand, in Latin America, groups such as the Gulf clan in Colombia or the PCC in Brazil already operate mines and dredgers. In Peru, almost 40 workers have been killed in deposits. On the other hand, in South Africa, the calls Zama Zamas They work under the control of mafias in abandoned mines, where authentic underground wars are fought. In Sudan, gold finances the RSF militia, accused of atrocities in the civil war. Logistics remembers drug trafficking: clandestine flights, improvised clues, corruption networks. With a crucial difference: while cocaine is always illegal, gold is legalized at the moment it merges into a ingot. The consequences are devastating. According to FTMercury poisons Ríos del Amazonas, fauna disappears and communities such as Yanomami suffer hunger, malaria and violence. “When the Garimpo arrives, diseases and drugs arrive,” explained the indigenous leader Juarez Saw. In South Africa, entire villages survive around ghost mines, trapped between poverty and violence. And in Sudan, gold has become a fuel of a civil war that already adds more than 150,000 dead. Governments against the strings. States try to react, with partial achievements. In Brazil, the Lula Government destroyed camps In the Yanomami Earth and boasts a 98% drop in illegal mines there and 40% less in gold exports. But the miners return when the operation ends. In South Africa, the police cut access to tunnels, without stopping the power of the mafias. In Sudan, international pressure has forced Dubai to harden purchase controls, although in his gold of gold there are still ingots of uncertain origin. The pattern is repeated: local corruption, territories impossible to monitor and criminal networks better financed than the states themselves. The formal market, innocent? The legal circuit is not alien either. The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) sets global standards, but is a private club and traders club. Its liquidation system concentrates world trade without public supervision. The European Central Bank warns that the opacity and concentration of the gold market represent a risk for global financial stability. Bernhard Schnellmann, former director of the Swiss Refinery Argor Heraeus, He has synthesized it in his opinion column for FT: “Gold is too important to leave it in the hands of private clubs.” The new oil of the crime. The gold, eternal symbol of wealth and security, is today the new oil of the crime: a resource that feeds mafias, destroys jungles and finances wars. For investors in London or Dubai it is an active refuge. For clandestine miners in the Amazon or South Africa, it is a promise of escape that often ends in violence. In the vaults, a 400 -ounces ingot is identical regardless of its origin. But behind each bar can hide rifles, malaria, corruption and poisoned rivers. Image | Pexels and Africraigs Xataka | The price of copper reached maximum for a tariff that was not. The result: the biggest fall in almost 40 years
