Brazil produced more than 52 tons of gold with some trace of illegality in 2021, most of it mined directly from the Amazon. The volume, 25% more than in 2020represents a new record in the country, according to a study published by the Escolhas Institute.

The 52.8 tons (52,806 kilos) of the precious metal showing signs of having been irregularly extracted they correspond to more than half of the gold produced in the country last year.

The data, to which the EFE agency had exclusive access, belong to the study on the origin of gold that the Escolhas Institute has been carrying out since 2015 through a methodology that analyzes official data and satellite images produced by the Mapbiomas network.

The export of the metal left the country last year with 5.3 billion dollars, an increase of 6% compared to 2020.

According to official data, Brazil sold about 103.9 tons of gold abroad last year, while the total production of the precious metal in 2021 was 97 tons, 7% less than that exported.

“There were 6.7 tons of gold that didn’t go through any national production registry, that is, it wasn’t even recycled,” Larissa Rodrigues, portfolio manager of the Escolhas Institute, told EFE.

“indigenous blood”

Brazil sells virtually all gold produced abroad and its main buyers are Canada (31%), Switzerland (25%) and the United Kingdom (15%).

“This means that those countries have no way of not being contaminated with indigenous blood-stained gold either environmental crimes in the Amazon “, underlined the expert.

Gold in Brazil is mainly mined by informal or artisanal mining known as “garimpo”. Unlike centuries ago, today’s ‘garimpo’ uses gigantic triples and often works ‘non sancta’ with the use of mercury to facilitate the search for the metal, polluting the rivers.

By 2021, this type of extraction covered 91.6% of the exploited area in the Brazilian Amazon, according to the Mapbiomas network, which maps land use in the country with satellite data.

This coincides with the Escolhas data, which indicates that 61% of the gold of dubious origin (29.6 tons) came from the jungle and indicates that in the indigenous reserves there, where any type of mining is illegal, Gold mining skyrocketed by 442% between 2020 and 2021.

Out of control

The problem, which has grown consecutively in recent years, is attributed by environmentalists to the permissiveness of the law and to the There is a lack of controls by the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

The president, who came to power in 2019 and now seeking re-election, defends the exploitation of natural resources in the Amazon, including indigenous reserves, and has loosened control of activities such as mining and timber trading, mostly practiced illegally in that region.

Added to this are regulations that facilitate the recycling of gold because, as Rodrigues explained, anyone who works in an informal mining company can sell it directly to a guaranteed financial institution that only asks you to fill out a form by hand and gives a paper receipt to the seller. .

To help contain the problem, Rodrigues suggests that, in addition to digitizing information – which would facilitate cross-checking data with treasury or environmental authorities in real time – it is “essential” to verify the origin of gold through chains of gold. custody such as those existing for products such as meat and wood, as well as centralizing the sale of metal in a single person in charge.

The expert also asks that the Brazilian Central Bank take action on the matter and exercise stricter control over financial institutions that authorize the purchase of gold because “this is where the signs of illegality are concentrated”.

Source: EFE

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