So Paulo, Jan 13 (AP): The medals were recognized as the most sustainable production ever.
To match the festive spirit of South America’s first Olympics, officials from Brazil, the host country of the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, claimed that the medals hung around athletes’ necks on the winners’ podiums were also a victory for the environment. They were: gold was made free of mercury and silver was recycled from discarded X-ray plates and mirrors.
Five years later, Marsam, the refiner that provided the gold for the medals, is finally processing gold purchased by hundreds of well-known publicly traded American companies – including Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon – that are legally liable. source metals are required. The industry had long been plagued by environmental and labor concerns.
But a comprehensive review of public records by The Associated Press found that the So Paulo-based company is in the process of being used by Brazilian prosecutors for an intermediary to buy gold illegally mined in indigenous lands and other areas deep in the Amazon. and shares a shared ownership link with it. Rainforests
The AP reported earlier in the series that the scale of prospecting for gold on indigenous lands has exploded in recent years and has included heavy equipment, fuel and wilderness for unauthorized airplanes for backhoes to tear down the earth in search. Includes carving out illegal landing strips. from precious metals.
The weak oversight of an able government by President Jair Bolsonaro, himself the son of a prophet, has compounded the problem of illegal gold mining in protected areas.
Critics also fault an international certification program used by manufacturers to show that they are not using minerals that come from conflict zones, saying it is an exercise in greenwashing.
“Unless the industry relies on self-regulation, there is no real traceability,” said Mark Pith, a professor of criminal law at the University of Basel in Switzerland and author of the 2018 book “Gold Laundering.” “People know where gold comes from, but they don’t bother going too far down the supply chain because they know they will be exposed to all kinds of criminal activity.” Like the brown and black tributaries that feed the Amazon River, gold mined illegally in the rainforest gets into the supply chain and becomes almost indistinguishable when mixed with clean gold.
The nuggets are pulled out of the woods and placed in dusty pockets of prospects in a nearby town, where they are sold to financial brokers.
To convert the raw ore into a tradable asset regulated by the central bank is just a handwritten document that authenticates the specific point in the rainforest where the gold was extracted.
The fewer questions asked, the better.
At many of those brokers’ Amazon checkpoints – the front door to the financial system – gold becomes the property of Diresu Frederico Sobrinho, known only by his first name.
For four decades, Dirsu has embodied the up-by-you-bootstraps myth of the Brazilian garimpiro, or prospector.
The son of a vegetable vendor who sold his produce near an infamous open-pit mine that was filled with prospectors — among them Bolsonaro’s father — they looked like swarming ants, he discovered gold in the mid-1980s. caught the key bug and began shipping planeloads of raw ore. From a remote Amazon city.
They secured their first concession in 1990, a year after the nation introduced a permitting regime to regulate prospecting.
From a high rise on So Paulo’s busiest route today, he is a major player in the Brazilian gold rush, with 173 prospecting areas either registered in his name or pending requests, according to the registry of Brazil’s mining regulator.
The same building houses the headquarters of Anoro, the country’s gold federation, which he heads. Until last year, Diresu was also a partner in Marsam.
But even with gold jewelry dangling from his fingers and wrists, Dirsu still proudly boasts his every man’s Garimpiro roots.
“You don’t inspire someone to go into the woods if they’re not chasing a dream,” he said in a rare interview from his corner office with a giant jade eagle. “Whoever makes a deal of gold, he has it: they dream, they believe, they like it.” “We have a saying among the Garimpiros: I am a pawn, but I am a pawn for gold,” he continued.
F.D’Gold, at the heart of the kingdom of Diresu, is the largest buyer of gold from prospecting sites in Brazil, bringing in a total of more than 2 billion (USD 361 million) from 252 wildcat sites last year, according to mining regulator data. Had shopping.
Only two international firms that run industrial-sized gold mines paid more in royalties in 2021, a sign of how once-artistic prospecting has become big business in Brazil – at least for some.
In August, federal prosecutors filed a civil suit against F.D’Gold and two other brokers, demanding the immediate suspension of all activities and payment of 10 billion reais (USD 1.8 billion) in social and environmental damages .
The complaint alleges that the companies failed to take action that could have prevented illegal extraction of a combined 4.3 metric tonnes from protected areas and indigenous areas where mining is not permitted. Dirsu said that his company complies with all laws and applies additional controls, but acknowledged that it is currently “impossible” to determine the exact origin of the gold obtained. He has proposed an industry-wide digital registry to improve transparency. The ongoing lawsuit is the result of a study published in July by the Federal University of Minas Gerais that found that 28 percent of Brazilian gold produced in 2019 and 2020 was potentially illegally mined. To reach that conclusion, the researchers scrutinized 17,400 government-registered transactions by F.D’Gold and other buyers to trace the location where the gold was allegedly mined.
In many cases, the given location was not an authorized site or, when cross-checked with satellite images, did not show any hallmarks of mining activity – deforestation, stagnant ponds of waste – meaning gold could be found elsewhere. was born.
Dirsu’s name and that of FD’Gold and his mining company Oro Roxo have cropped up repeatedly over the years in several criminal investigations. He has been charged but never convicted.
A decade ago, federal prosecutors in the Amazonian state of Amapá accused his company of knowingly buying illegal gold from a national park that was later converted into gold bars. The charges were dismissed in 2017 after a federal judge in Brasilia ruled that FD’Gold made the purchase legally, as evidenced by the invoices. Due to the lack of evidence, separate money laundering charges against Direcue were also dismissed. Direcci has denied wrongdoing. (AP) RUP RUP
(This story has been published as part of an auto-generated Syndicate wire feed. Headline or body have not been edited by ABP Live.)
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