Story Publication logo November 24, 2024

On the Trail of Gold

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English

How illegally mined gold ends up in the legitimate supply chain

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Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

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Large quantities of gold end up in Europe, for the mining of which people lose their lives and nature is destroyed. Supply chain laws and certificates cannot prevent this. Why not? Our author followed the gold from Suriname to Switzerland


The wind from the rotors whips up the mud, a voice creaks from the radio: sortez! Get out! Out of the helicopter, onto the skids, then ankle-deep into the mud. Three soldiers from the French Foreign Legion and a fourth man in the uniform of the Gendarmerie are already waiting, in this clearing deep in the Amazon forest. The men gesticulate frantically. One of them looks around nervously, another shoulders his assault rifle, a Heckler and Koch HK416. The trees are thick all around. Someone is watching them, and they know it.

It is eight o'clock in the morning and Lieutenant Colonel Francis Bataillon, a stocky man in soaked clothing, is leading his men along a trail. He pulls a GPS device out of his pocket, bends over it and brings the men up to speed: There are around 20 gold mining settlements nearby, and 200 garimpeiros, illegal gold miners, are said to be working along the river. The plan is to chase them away and burn down their settlements. Engines, hoses and pumps are to be destroyed. 


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For 29 days, Bataillon and his men will be out and about in this rainforest on behalf of the French government. “Harpie” is the name of their operation, which has been running here in the rainforest of French Guiana, an overseas department of France on the north coast of South America, since 2008. The country consists largely of a huge national park, the Parc Nationale de Guyane, the size of Switzerland. Operations such as “Harpie” are currently taking place in many countries in the Amazon region, police destruction squads are also roaming the forests in Colombia and Brazil. This is often the only way to counter illegal gold mining in the rainforest. 

Where the gold miners invade, they cause disasters for people and nature: They cut down trees, clog up rivers with mud, bring booze and weapons with them, carry violence and disease into the rainforest. The mercury used in gold mining poisons the traditional peoples' staple food: fish. Studies in French Guiana show that up to 97 percent of people living in mining areas—indigenous people and maroons, the descendants of runaway plantation slaves—have far too high mercury levels in their blood. This also applies to the gold miners, who are gradually poisoning themselves. 


Soldiers of the French Foreign Legion search for illegal gold diggers in the Amazon forest. Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

But the fight lieutenant colonel Bataillon has to face is unequal, because their real opponent is the world market. The price of gold has broken records time and again recently: It has more than doubled over the past ten years, the price of one gram was more than 80 euros at the beginning of the week. Investors in rich countries see gold as a crisis-proof investment, as protection against inflation, banking crises and wars. The Chinese state is buying gold en masse because it wants to become less dependent on the dollar. Russia and Iran use gold to protect themselves from sanctions. In India, kilos of gold are hung around the bride as a dowry at weddings, and with the rising population and prosperity, the number of marriages and gold presents is rising as well. 

That is why it has never been so worthwhile to mine for gold. A fifth of the precious metal mined worldwide comes from “small-scale artisanal mining”, with 10 million people in 70 countries working in this sector. The vast majority takes place completely unregulated — in such toxic, environmentally destructive and violent ways as here in French Guiana. 

Shh, Sergeant Major Maherilaza Rakotdadralambo points with a movement of his head in the direction of a clearing. Wooden barracks can be seen through the thicket. He tells the lieutenant-colonel to wait in the cover for a moment, because he, Maherilaza, is responsible for the tricky situations here. He leads the way with two other soldiers, a young Moldovan and a Slovakian. Maherilaza was born in Madagascar, becoming French after joining the Foreign Legion: an arm of the French army that has its own rules and is considered to be particularly disciplined and tough. Here in the rainforest, twelve Foreign Legionnaires secure the area so that three gendarmes can do their job. 

The Moldavian whistles from a distance, Maherilaza whistles back, it sounds like a bird chirping. Then they run, they have to be quick, because the startled gold miners will now run off, hide their equipment, throw pump engines into puddles of water, throw generators down slopes. Anything is better than letting the gendarmes burn it. Maherilaza spies a few men fleeing into the bushes, thin, almost emaciated figures in rubber boots and hoodies. One of them is dragging a heavy, black garbage bag behind him, but the Moldavian cuts him off. At a stream that floods the path, he stands with his rifle and gives the order: Back to camp! 

Minutes later, all the gold miners are sitting on tree trunks and waiting. The gendarmes take their personal details as best they can. No one has any ID. One of them, Edmilson, 51 years old, says that he has been working in these forests for 29 years. He cannot read or write and has not learned a trade. “Even if they lock me up,” says Edmilson, ”I'll stay here.” 


Sergeant Major Maherilaza Rakotdadralambo watches as the helicopter transports an injured comrade. Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

He will probably stay. The gendarmerie can't extract hundreds of gold miners from the forest in their helicopter on every mission or even deport them. And even if some are arrested, they are sentenced to fines and return to the camps a short time later. “The same names come up again and again,” says Bataillon. At least, he says, the police actions are slowing down illegal production somewhat. It costs around 15,000 euros to re-equip an improvised gold mine. On the other hand, 15,000 euros are quickly earned in a few days' work. 

Legal gold mining companies also operate in French Guiana, outside the natural park. In order to obtain their permits, they have to comply with a number of social and environmental requirements: no mercury use, reforestation after leaving the mining site, payment in accordance with French law, and so on. Over time, however, hundreds of illegal miners settle around these legitimate gold operations, fortune seekers who are then in close contact with the legitimate entrepreneurs. They buy fuel, tools and spare parts, for example, from the legal entrepreneurs. They pay with gold that they have laundered. 

In this way, some of the illegal gold ends up in the legitimate companies' stocks. It is the first, most direct way of mixing, but there are many more such ways. The gendarmerie estimates that around eight tons of illegal gold are produced in French Guiana every year — and only one ton of legal gold. 


One of the gold panners at the police checkpoint in the Amazon forest. Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

Actually, such a thing should be impossible. All over the world, laws, regulations and gold industry certificates stipulate that gold from dubious sources should not be bought by anyone. Gold, which is processed into smartphones on the factory floors of technology companies, turned into jewelry in the hands of a jeweler or placed in a family safe as a treasure for a rainy day is supposed to be clean. The strictest of these regulations is the EU Due Diligence Act for Raw Materials Supply Chains, which is enforced in all EU countries.

But is this realistic? Gold embarks on a long journey from this mining camp in the Amazon rainforest, with so many intermediate steps that it vanishes and pops back up many times along the way. At every link in the supply chain, there are people who actively try to cover up the traces of this gold. 

One thing, says Lieutenant Colonel Bataillon, is extremely rare on his missions: Gold. Seizing gold, even just catching sight of it, is a rarity. “Gold always finds a way,” says Bataillon, shrugging his shoulders. It had probably already set off when the helicopter could be heard from afar. It will cover 300 kilometers within a few days, right through the rainforest. It is in the bags and trouser pockets of couriers, called burrinhos – little donkeys who are responsible for hauling materials and, in the case of police operations, for escaping with the gold. 

The Amazon is criss-crossed by thousands of kilometers of well-trodden paths, a network of trails shared by indigenous people, drug smugglers, poachers and the gold couriers. They lead all the way to the Maroni, the border river to Suriname. The first international border that the gold has to cross. 


The gold panners feed on rice, beans, chicken and, as you can see here in the picture, roasted manioc flour. Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

On the west bank of the Maroni, men in rubber boots heave packages wrapped in plastic from the docks into boats. Frozen chicken, beans, rice, Coca-Cola, beer, mercury, ibuprofen. This is where the supplies for the illegal gold mining camps are organized and everything you need can be bought. A total of 120 warehouses stands on stilts on the shore, run by Chinese traders who have dominated trade in Suriname for decades. Small settlements have sprung up around some of the warehouses. 

The largest of these settlements is called Antonio do Brinco — Antonio with the earrings — named after a Brazilian gold panner who built the first hut here in 2001. And here actually means in the middle of nowhere: this place in the jungle can only be reached by boat or propeller plane. There are no police, no laws. You pay with gold. Every trader has a small scale, the price of gold is written on a notice pinned to the wall behind the counter and is adjusted every day to the London Fix, the world gold price. With few exceptions, gold from the mines in French Guiana ends up here, in one of these warehouses. 

The Chinese are also the most important financiers of illegal gold mining in French Guiana. When the gendarmerie burns its material, it is bought here, on credit if necessary. The Chinese have no problem lending money. “They know that every gram of gold comes back to them,” says a garimpeiro nicknamed Cabelinho, sitting on the dock with a can of Heineken. He has stopped in Antonio do Brinco because his canoe has engine trouble. 

Early in the morning, fog lying over the Maroni, a young man with long dreadlocks stands in front of his canoe and is accepting parcels. They call him Papa. While Brazilian boat captains supply the gold mines on the other side of the river, Maroons are responsible for the journey in the other direction: from Antonio do Brinco to the cities, closer to the world market. Papa accepts euros or gold as payment. There are three names on each of the parcels: A sender's name, usually a pseudonym, next to it is “Papa” and the name of a recipient in the city, a courier or a gold store. These are parcels full of gold. 

Dozens of such couriers wait along the shore for parcels. At seven o'clock, the engines rattle off, 20 minutes upriver to an island, Lawa Tabiki. There is only one building there, and a 200-metre-long landing strip in the grass. Papa gets out, greets the security guards in front of the building, sits down on a bench and waits. A propeller plane lands — airline Gum Air — and Papa and the other couriers load around 100 parcels into the plane. Raw gold worth tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars is on board today. Gum Air departs from Lawa Tabiki six times a week. 

An hour later, it lands at a small airfield in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname. It has a Dutch name, Zorg en Hoop, care and hope, Suriname was a Dutch colony. Men who have come for the parcels are waiting in the parking lot in front of the hangar. They load them into their cars and drive off. 

Paramaribo is a colorful city. Maroons and Haitians sell crabs at the port, Turks run casinos in the center, Dutch run the large hotels and Chinese run the retail trade. The president is of South Asian origin, as is the majority of the population. Warungs, Indonesian restaurants, loempia and nasi goreng are everywhere. If you drive less than five kilometers, you will already pass 25 stores with signs offering to buy and sell gold. But the heart of the gold business is in the neighborhood of the newest immigrants, the Brazilians. 

At a corner house with tinted windows covered with low-resolution photos of gold bars, an armed man in camouflage trousers opens the door and leads into a back room. It's loud inside: A gold store employee stands in front of a furnace with a crucible set into it, melting down a chunk of gold, burning out remnants of mercury. An exhaust system sucks in the air above the furnace, protecting the man from the toxic gases. If you want to sell gold in Paramaribo, you don't need an ID card or proof of origin. Surinamese law does not require this. “We have customers who work in Suriname and customers who work in French Guiana,” says the gold buyer who owns the store. “We buy gold from here and from there.” 


An illegal gold digger tells the police that these are pots and pans for cooking — and not utensils for panning for gold. The gendarmerie then decide not to burn the material. Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

On post-its above the workstations, the employees note their daily turnover, 70 grams, 150 grams. On good days, one employee takes in up to three kilos. The suppliers are the couriers from the parking lot at the airport. 

Once the goods have been checked, weighed and paid for, they are placed in a large bowl. The gold is then melted down into raw bars, each weighing around one kilo. The transporter comes every day, collects the bars from several gold stores and drives them 50 kilometers inland. To a place where the trail of illegal gold is blurred once again. 

Next to the cargo terminals of Zanderij International Airport, in a faceless complex of buildings, Ryan Tjon is waiting. He is the director of the Kaloti Suriname Mint House (KSMH), the country's official assayer — in other words, the national institute where gold is melted down to a homogeneous standard, its purity is determined and the amount of tax that gold traders have to pay to the state is calculated. 

The Mint House is a crucial institution for the economy and public finances in Suriname. In terms of value, gold accounts for 80 percent of the country's exports and contributes one tenth of the gross domestic product. The function of assayer used to be carried out by the central bank, as is customary, but Suriname lacked the necessary technical expertise. At some point, it came to light that the purity of the gold had been incorrectly calculated for years and that the state was losing out on millions in tax revenue. 

The then President Desi Bouterse — a man who was convicted of murder and drug trafficking in the Netherlands and Suriname and has been on the run since 2020 — looked for a pragmatic solution and found it in the Emirate of Dubai in 2015. Within just a few years, a company called Kaloti Precious Metals had become the largest gold refiner in the Middle East, or even the largest in the world, depending on how you calculate it. Kaloti, an empire in the hands of a few businessmen, was expanding all over the world at the time, opening refineries and offices in Singapore, Hong Kong and Miami. Paramaribo was to become the entry point in South America. 

In the end, a deal was struck: the Surinamese state and Kaloti jointly founded the Kaloti Suriname Mint House. 10 percent belongs to the state, 60 percent belongs to Kaloti, which provides its modern technology, and 30 percent is held by a corporation around a Surinamese jewelry dealer and his friends. Harry Dorinnie, a director of the central bank, speaks openly of a “gold mafia”. A dozen men in politics and business who controlled everything from purchasing, processing and testing to exporting. 

The head of the facility, Ryan Tjon, doesn't want to speak on the records about any of this, but he gives a short tour of the modern production facility. He shows where the gold is melted down, cleaned and tested. At the end, a document bearing a stamp from the Surinamese state is issued for each bar. It says: The gold comes from Suriname. This is worth a lot in the international gold business. Suriname is not considered a “high-risk area” like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rebel groups finance themselves through the gold trade, or Venezuela, where the gold trade is partly handled by drug gangs. 

But where has the illegal gold from the camp in French Guiana gone, the one that Lieutenant Colonel Bataillon and his men had invaded? It was likely smuggled across the border, bought up by a Chinese merchant, mixed with other gold by gold buyers in the Brazilian quarter and now melted down into a bar at the Mint House. From here it now travels around the world. 

KLM will take care of the onward transportation. The Dutch airline is well equipped for transporting valuables and offers special insurance products and a suitable infrastructure. In Suriname, Mint House employees drive the bars to the cargo terminal at Zanderij Airport. There they are loaded onto a KLM plane, temporarily stored in a vault at Amsterdam Schiphol and sent on their onward flight to their final destination. 


Sergeant Major Maherilaza Rakotdadralambo in the camp. Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

This final destination, according to government export data, is in almost all cases: Dubai.

The Dubai Multi Commodity Center (DMCC) has a slogan: “Where the World does Business”. It is located in a skyscraper from whose upper floors you can see the famous Palm Island. The DMCC is one of the most important centers in the world for trading in gold, diamonds, metals and other commodities. Almost all major refineries, gold traders and brokers have an office in this tower, and 20 to 30 percent of all gold in the world passes through the DMCC at some point. The United Arab Emirates is the third largest gold exporter in the world — remarkable, as it does not produce a single gram itself. 

One man in particular is behind Dubai's rise to become a global gold trading center: Munir Al Kaloti, a merchant from Jordan. In 1976, he began trading gold at the souq in Dubai, a market with hundreds of small stores selling gold, jewelry and diamonds. Dubai was already a trading center for gold from Africa and the Middle East at the time, but only on a small scale. Kaloti changed that when he started buying up scrap gold in 1989. He had it melted down, refined and sold it on, and in the 2000s his company became one of the largest refiners in the world. Today, his old company Kaloti Precious Metals no longer exists after a series of international scandals, but the owners from back then are still in business. 

By the early 2010s at the latest, Dubai had become a global center for wholesale gold trading. There was less bureaucracy here than in other trading centers. Elsewhere, sometimes catalogues of proof of the origin of individual gold shipments were required; in Dubai, two A4 pages of explanation were sufficient at times. 

At the same time, the relaxed approach to bureaucracy repeatedly gave rise to suspicions. There were court proceedings, investigations by international authorities and sanctions by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in Paris. According to the Swiss NGO Swissaid, around 435 tons of gold were smuggled from African countries to Dubai in 2022. An analysis of customs data for the Carnegie Endowment in 2016 revealed that 46% of all gold imports to Dubai were said to originate from conflict regions or high-risk areas. “This is a whitewashing operation,” says Marcena Hunter from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, an NGO in Geneva. “Dubai is laundering the gold for other countries.” 

One particularly interesting innovation that helped disguise the path of the gold is so-called “Jungle Jewellery” — a business in which the old Kaloti company apparently had its share. In 2016, for example, a lot of gold was offered from East Java in Indonesia, but child labor and the use of mercury were commonplace there. This is difficult to sell gold. Tons of this gold eventually made its way to Dubai — via an interesting detour. 

Spencer Campbell, a former regional manager at Kaloti, explains the route he was responsible for at the time: the mine gold was first delivered to the Indonesian city of Surabaya, where it was forged into jewelry, 200 to 300 grams each. Campbell says that it didn't even have to look particularly convincing. A lump of gold on a chain was enough. It was sent to Singapore or Thailand, melted down as “scrap gold from the jewelry industry” and then sent on to Dubai. And from there, says Campbell, it was also sent to other countries, such as Switzerland. These are not small batch shipments. Campbell recalls: “On one occasion we sent half a ton in two days.”

This trick is used in many places around the world today, including Suriname. In the Brazilian district of Paramaribo, you can meet jewelers who do almost nothing but this: melt lumps of gold from the rainforest into chains. From there, the gold finds many ways. If you take a closer look, it is always striking how opaque this whole business is: in 2020, for example, customs in Suriname registered that 7,518 kilograms of gold were sent to Dubai. However, customs in Dubai registered 14,017 kilograms on arrival, almost twice as much. How much of this difference is smuggling, “jungle jewelry” or misdeclaration for the purpose of tax evasion cannot be determined — in any case, the path of this gold is not transparent. 

Inquiries are unwelcome. We asked the refinery MTM&O — successor to the Kaloti empire in Dubai — how it deals with such supply chain risks. Could it be that illegally mined and smuggled gold is in the supply chain from Suriname? How does the company protect itself against this? 

The question is obvious, if only because business relations between Suriname and Dubai are so close. The answer came quickly: “The conclusions you have drawn appear to be based on little more than unsubstantiated and outdated speculation,” CEO Osama M. al-Kaloti wrote back immediately, followed by a threat. “It goes without saying that should you publish defamatory statements, we will take all available measures to protect the reputation of MTM&O Gold Refinery DMCC and its rights in general.” His company does not comment on details of its trading activities. It is monitored by the Ministry of Economy in Dubai and regularly undergoes several audits. 


Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

China, India and Turkey, for example, are supplied directly with gold from Dubai. Germany, France and the USA are not on the customer list. Refineries, companies and central banks from these countries do not buy in Dubai because there are doubts that the origin of the gold is checked carefully enough. If gold is to become truly marketable in Western countries, it must first be tested and remelted in a gold refinery with an impeccable reputation. These are usually those that have been certified by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA): a kind of self-regulatory body for the gold industry in the British capital, which requires third party audits around the world and whose standards are said to be stricter than most laws. The London auditors demand proof of origin, compliance with labor rights and environmental regulations. None of the refineries in Dubai are LBMA-certified. 

But the gold often undertakes astonishing journeys from Dubai. Cases have already been uncovered in which it was sent on from there to an unsuspicious country of production — Ghana or South Africa, for example — and then exported and refined in some buyer country. You can meet gold dealers in Dubai who openly report on such practices — Oman and Bahrain, for example, are still popular transit points for this type of gold laundering or smuggling. But these dealers do not want to appear in the newspaper by name. 

And there is an even more direct route that leads right to the heart of Europe: to Switzerland. Swiss import statistics show that a whopping 151 tons of gold were imported from Dubai in 2023, more than twice as much as in 2022 and 2021. 

On a late summer's day in the Southern Alps, Christoph Wild climbs up stone steps set into Monte Generoso, the local mountain of Mendrisio, a town in Ticino halfway between Lugano and Como. Wild is a slim, grey-haired man, and he looks like a Swiss banker. He opens the wooden gate to his weekend home: solid wood table, wine cellar, view over a green valley full of seventies buildings. 

The area here is the industrial heart of Ticino, and the global heart of gold refining. And Christoph Wild is one of the most important people in this business. He used to manage the Argor-Heraeus gold refinery and is now President of the Swiss Association of Precious Metals Manufacturers. 

Three of the world's largest refineries are located within a radius of just a few kilometers: Valcambi, MKS PAMP and Argor-Heraeus. Highly secured industrial plants in which the delivered gold is converted into its purest possible form using chemicals and electrolysis. It has to be 99.999 percent pure for national banks to accept this gold. Workers in heat-protective clothing pour liquid gold into ingot molds. Before the gold cools completely, it is stamped with the purity, name of the refinery and serial number. The bars are then passed on to the end customer, which may be a bank, a jeweler or an industrial company. 

All Ticino refineries are certified by the LBMA in London, which makes this refining step particularly valuable. Gold that has been melted down here is now considered marketable everywhere. It is surprisingly unclear how much of the world's gold production passes through the Swiss plants. The environmental organization WWF estimates that up to 70 percent passes through. Basel law professor Mark Pieth, an expert on the Swiss gold market, puts the figure at 50 percent. 34 percent, claims the Swiss Ministry of Economic Affairs. Between 10 and 16 percent of the gold mined, according to the industry itself. It is clear that there are uncertainties in the Swiss gold business. 

The industry association, which Wild heads, represents all Swiss gold refineries — with one exception: Valcambi. The Ticino-based company was a founding member of the association in 1978, but left in October 2023 due to “irreconcilable differences”. The issue was the origin of gold. Today, Valcambi is the only Swiss refinery that imports from Dubai. 


Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

Just a few years ago, hardly anyone was interested in the origin of gold. However, NGOs and the media have since made more and more problems public: refineries, jewelers and gold processors in the West that were supplied by civil war parties in the Congo or from illegal gold mines in Peru. “Due diligence” and “supply chain responsibility” have become political issues. 

This led to discussions and some improvements at the Swiss gold refineries, but full transparency is still far away. When the NGO Society for Threatened Peoples tried to find out from Swiss customs in 2019 where all the gold deliveries to Switzerland came from, the Association of Precious Metals Manufacturers prevented this in court. The Federal Supreme Court ruled in favor of the refinery operators: the supply chain of the gold was subject to tax secrecy. 

Christoph Wild, head of the association, says: “Misunderstood transparency can cause enormous damage.” In other industries, it was not common practice to disclose business partners in such detail. “We think the decision would have set a precedent that would have been bad for Swiss industry in general.” However, Wild emphasizes that the industry makes an effort not to accept dirty gold, but that “it doesn't always succeed”. This is why the association has since agreed to a change in the law, which at least gives customs more freedom of action when inspecting refinery operators. 

Wild does not want to comment on the fact that Valcambi continues to source gold from Dubai, despite all the doubts: After all, he says, his association no longer represents this company. But the head of Valcambi, Michael Mesaric, responds to inquiries by email. How can it be that Valcambi imports gold from Dubai when all other refineries in the country refuse to do so? “Valcambi only accepts gold produced in Dubai from a few approved refineries that have fulfilled the extended due diligence requirements and are able to trace and disclose the origin of their raw materials,” Mesaric replies. 

But it does sound daring: that a company says to import only clean gold from Dubai, even though the local authorities have their doubts. The Financial Intelligence Unit of the United Arab Emirates wrote in a report in October 2022 that precious metal traders in Dubai “may be involved in gold smuggling from conflict regions (...). From there, gold enters the country, is processed here and exported to Western European countries.” The Swiss Ministry of Economic Affairs also warned against gold from the United Arab Emirates in a letter to Swiss refineries in 2021, which the Bloomberg news agency was able to view. 

A study published in 2020 by the NGOs Swissaid and Global Witness shows how quickly the trail of gold can be lost to inspectors. According to the study, Valcambi imported dozens of tons of gold from Kaloti Dubai and from the current company MTM&O between 2016 and 2020. The authors' accusation was that gold of unclear origin was being laundered in Switzerland — and then labeled as LBMA bars. The report was reported in media all over Europe, every player in the gold business is aware of this study. 

However, when Swiss customs finally inspected Valcambi, a complication arose: the refinery had not purchased the gold directly in Dubai, but from a trader in London called Trust One. The vice president of the customs authority then wrote as a result of the audit that Valcambi had purchased gold from Trust One that came from MTM&O. However, there was nothing wrong under customs law. By law, Valcambi only had to check Trust One, not its suppliers. 

And Valcambi wrote on request that they had found the London dealer to be trustworthy. After all, this company is supervised by the authorities in England and has never been accused of any illegal activities. The owners of Trust One can be found in the British commercial register: investment companies whose incorporation documents show the names of four men: Munir al-Kaloti, Tarek El-Mdaka, Monzer Medakka and Osama al-Kaloti. The names of the men who are also behind MTM&O. Tarek El-Mdaka also signed the founding documents of the Kaloti Suriname Mint House in Paramaribo at the time. 

“We have not been working with the MTMO brand since 2020,” writes Valcambi on request. The company also states that “gold (...) is always accompanied by a Statement of Conformance (SoC)”, “issued by the refinery producing the bars. All SoCs have been and will be verified by Valcambi.” Such a Statement of Conformance, issued by the refinery, is a self-declaration. And in the gold industry, self-declarations are often not even worth the paper they’re written on. In Paramaribo, a gold exporter named Conrad Issa presented the statement that he had to fill out for his buyer in Dubai: an assurance that the gold was of “non-criminal origin”. Issa in turn demanded the same assurance from his suppliers. No further checks are carried out there and are not required by law in Suriname. “We have the signed documents,” says Issa. He lacks insight between the source, buyer and exporter. “We just cover our ass,” he says. 

Valcambi is aware of this itself: “Any information that is not verified harbors a risk because it is a self-declaration,” writes its CEO, Michael Mesaric, in an email on request. Valcambi therefore also checks on site. “As far as I know, nobody does this except Valcambi.” 

Can you tell from looking at the gold where it really comes from? Everyone in the industry knows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to trace the supply chains precisely. Not even the strict London-based LBMA has complete confidence in the practices of its industry: “54 percent of the material from our refiners comes from recycling,” says Neil Darby, Chief Technical Officer of the organization. However, according to the industry organization World Gold Council, only around a third of annual production is actually recycled. If 90 percent of all gold goes through an LBMA refinery, the figures don't add up. 

When asked, Darby confirms that not everything can be right: “20 percent of all gold worldwide is from small-scale mining, and represents only 2 percent of the gold that passes through LBMA-certified refineries,” he says.

Where is the rest?

“Gold finds a way,” says Darby. It seems that the “Jungle Jewellery” trick also works on an industrial scale. 

“Recycling” is not a particularly narrow term: according to the LBMA definition, recycling is ”anything that contains gold and does not come directly from a mine in its first gold life cycle.” 


Image by Gerno Odang/DIE ZEIT. French Guiana.

Mathias Baier is the head of Deksor, an abbreviation for the somewhat cumbersome official “German EU Due Diligence Authority for Raw Material Supply Chains”. Deksor reports to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and was set up because companies in the EU have had to meet strict requirements when importing gold and other critical minerals since 2021. Baier's people are supposed to monitor this. 

Baier has worked in the mining industry himself. He knows his way around gold mines, has been to the Congo and East Africa and is aware of the smuggling routes. In the interview, he expresses himself as cautiously as a head of a government body has to: “In most cases, we can't trace the gold back to the country of origin,” he says. Customs law does not provide for the actual origin to be recorded, only the country of last processing. “At the moment, tracking often ends in Switzerland.” And Germany imports 70 percent of its gold from Switzerland. “As long as Switzerland imports gold from Dubai — and we know the routes smuggled gold takes there — there is a fundamental risk of conflict for German companies.” 

And the on-site inspections by the auditors sent by the companies themselves or by the LBMA in London? Aren't they collecting all the information about the entire supply chain? “Detailed audit reports are crucial, but we need to see them,” answers Baier. But his authority is not allowed to do so. “Foreign refineries can decide for themselves whether or not to share audit reports with us,” he says. 

So, where did the gold from the jungle camp in French Guiana end up? If you follow all the diversions, along the smuggling routes, the intermediate smelters, the refiners, the only possible answer is: We do not know. We cannot know. It probably ended up somewhere in the legal market.

Which also means that no one can rule out that it is not in a wedding ring that someone then buys from a jeweler in Paris, or that it ends up as a bar at the German Central Bank in Frankfurt or at a manufacturer in Milan. Anyone in this industry who promises clean gold relies on documents from refineries that the authorities are not allowed to inspect. These in turn are based on documents issued by exporters in countries without supply chain laws. Based on promises made by buyers to “cover their ass”. Based on claims by exporters and authorities in countries whose main income is gold exports and whose highest officials and richest businessmen are involved. 

“No one can say with absolute certainty where exactly the gold imported into Germany comes from,” says Matthias Baier, “neither the importers nor the Deksor."

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