- Latin American cartels once were masters of the drug trade, but spikes in prices led them into controlling a new venture.
- Criminals also took advantage of poor control over the mining sector and used it to launder money, a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has found.
- Drug trafficking groups may control the logistics and the equipment supply in gold mining sites or charge miners for the right to use a specific area.
- In the Tapajós River Basin, in the Brazilian Amazon, gold mining is also closely connected with crimes like sexual abuse and human trafficking.
The gold business has become more and more attractive for criminal organizations, as shown by a report published in late May by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Behind this trend is the rise in gold prices and the metal’s suitability for money laundering, thanks to its high value, ease of transport and the facility of selling it quickly in many parts of the world.
Gold prices have been on the rise since the 2008 financial crisis. An ounce, sold for around $700 at the time, reached $1,900 in 2020 as investors turned to more reliable assets. In 2025, Donald Trump’s trade war, the Russia invasion in Ukraine and the war in Palestine have led to new price records, reaching $3,500 — a 500% spike since 2008.
Another explanation is “the perceived lower risk in the gold mining sector compared to other illegal activities like drug trafficking,” Claudia Carpanese, from the UNODC’s Research and Trend Analysis Branch, told Mongabay in a video call.
The report examined the world’s leading gold suppliers in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. It concluded that “organized crime groups have embedded themselves in gold supply chains to such an extent that they now pose a serious global threat.”
The document also stated that organizations with roots in drug trafficking in Latin America “have used established smuggling routes and infrastructure to expand into illegal gold mining,” using gold revenues to reinvest into other criminal operations.
Specifically in the Amazon,where gold mining has doubled its area since 2018, organized crime and environmental crime are increasingly connected, and the lack of control over the gold supply chain makes the sector a lure to criminal groups. “Markets that are highly deregulated, have a high degree of informality and generate a lot of resources open up a great opportunity for these other groups to operate,” Melina Risso, research director and spokesperson for the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank focused on the areas of public, climate and digital security, told Mongabay in a video call.
Sometimes, criminals seize control of extraction sites, trade routes or refining infrastructure. In other cases, both businesses share the same logistics, like airplanes to smuggle drugs, gold and mercury through international borders. “This does not necessarily mean that all people [working in the mines] are involved in the criminal drug group, but these logistics end up coming together,” Risso said.
Drug trafficking may also start to control the services offered in mining sites, such as transport, equipment and food supply. They may also charge miners for the right to explore a specific area. “One thing is clear: The level of violence is growing exponentially,” the Igarapé research director concluded. “The arrival of these groups brings new ways of dealing with conflicts and new types of weapons.”
In Brazil, one of the world’s largest gold producers and where most of the metal has signs of illegality, the UNODC found strong links between illegal mining and human trafficking, human rights violations, financial crimes and drug trafficking. In 2022, the Brazilian Federal Police targeted a criminal group that had even created its own cryptocurrency to launder money from illegal gold mining, “demonstrating the evolving technical methods used to conceal proceeds.”
“Environmental crime does not occur in a vacuum but is connected to different types of crime,” Risso said. “In the Amazon, in particular, different illicit economies end up converging.”
In 2023, UNODC conducted 863 interviews with gold miners in the municipalities of Tapajós River Basin, known as the epicenter of the Amazon illegal gold mine in the Pará state. The organization found that 40% of the workers were subjected to conditions such as loss of freedom of movement, degrading working conditions, violence or being forced to perform sexual acts to pay debts or receive wages.
Half of them received an amount of money lower than the legal minimum or than what was agreed upon, and reported having received some kind of threat. They also reported poor working conditions, with more than 12.5 work hours per day, 6.5 days a week, and suffering from serious work injuries.
“Sometimes these workers are abducted by organized crime groups, or maybe they’re just pushed there with false ideas of earning some money, and maybe they’re trapped there,” Carpanese said, adding that many workers spend their salaries on services offered by the mine’s owner, such as alcohol and prostitution. “So basically, they’re trapped in a loop where they spend everything they earn there. And so it’s really hard for them to find a way out.”
In the last few years, the Brazilian administration has been working to increase surveillance on the ground with major raids to expel illegal miners from Indigenous territories and to make it harder to sell illegal gold in Brazil. The crackdown has led to a drop in new mines and in Brazil’s gold exports, presumably reducing the illegal gold that usually found its way into the legal market due to previous poor regulation. However, a Mongabay investigation found that criminal organizations are bending the rules by smuggling the metal into Venezuela and Guyana.
“In addition to doing our homework, we also need to work on regional coordination and a collective vision because all countries in the region suffer from this,” Risso said. “There is no point in closing the circle only on the Brazilian side.”
Brazil has been developing a library to help police agents verify the origins of illegal gold, but after the metal reaches the refineries around the world, it’s impossible to trace it. That is why pushing these companies to stop buying illegal gold is so important.
“It’s impossible to track all places where gold is extracted, especially in the Amazon. But the concentration of refining capacities [in a few countries] is also an opportunity for intervention” the UNODC researcher said.
In 2023, 56% of the gold produced worldwide was imported by Switzerland, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, India and China, the UNODC report shows. In those countries, refineries transform the gold mixed with other substances into gold bars with at least 99.5% purity, the standard required by international markets.
“The burden of illegal mining cannot fall solely on the countries where exploitation is taking place. We need to work on sharing this responsibility among all parties involved,” Risso said.
Banner image: A large percentage of the gold miners in the Tapajós River Basin are subjected to poor work conditions and restrictions on freedoms. Image by Fernando Martinho/Mongabay.
Amazon illegal gold mines drive sex trafficking in the Brazil-Guyana border
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