Gold at any cost: Rising metal prices multiply environmental crimes

In the southwest of the state of Pará, Brazil, beneath the vast, darkened waters of the Tapajós River, which slowly meander through the dense Amazon rainforest, a stealthy misfortune creeps along. With the river current, mercury spreads: an invisible poison that does not kill with the immediacy of a bullet, but that leaves a trail of violent disruption in every body it hits, like an unannounced sentence.

Seven years ago, the inhabitants of the Munduruku Indigenous land, which belongs to the Tapajós region, began to notice a significant increase in strange health phenomena that aroused widespread concern among the communities. Some children were born with cerebral palsy, others faced severe difficulties in walking, while many adults had developed tremors, vision loss, and neurological problems such as memory lapses.

“We didn’t understand what was happening, why so many people were having these problems,” Alessandra Korap Munduruku, an Indigenous leader and socio-environmental activist, told EL PAÍS. “We suspected that these problems were related to mining, but we needed help.”

It was in 2018 that the Munduruku people decided to ask the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) to carry out an investigation into the health status of its members. By analyzing hair samples from residents of three Munduruku villages, as well as fish from the tributaries of the river that flows through these communities, researchers discovered that six out of 10 people analyzed were contaminated with levels of mercury higher than those recommended by international safety standards, which caused irreversible health problems. In addition, fish, the most accessible food source in the region, was one of the main carriers of the toxic substance. “The river was sick and it was making everyone sick,” says Korap.

“We observed adults with severe neurological disorders associated with high mercury contamination,” says Paulo Basta, a doctor and one of the researchers in charge of the Fiocruz study. “We saw children with disabilities in the main developmental milestones: they were slow to sit up, crawl, stand up or speak their first words. Some had congenital abnormalities,” says the scientist. “We often say that these populations live in a state of socio-environmental vulnerability. But in addition to historical vulnerabilities, there is an overlap of factors related to mining and contamination that aggravate their situation.”

Mercury is commonly used by miners to extract gold. The substance binds to mineral grains and water, forming a metallic amalgam that is then heated, evaporating the mercury to obtain pure gold. Since 1980, the Munduruku Indigenous people have suffered the consequences of the invasion of illegal gold prospectors. But in recent years, the increase in its price has triggered interest in these illegal activities in lands protected by the Brazilian state, as well as in other countries in South America.

In December 2024, a Brazilian Federal Police operation dismantled a gold trafficking scheme illegally extracting from Indigenous lands, including the Munduruku. The criminal group recruited citizens from various nations to dispatch suitcases loaded with gold on commercial flights. Authorities estimate that these individuals removed about a ton of gold from the state of Pará, with an estimated value of around $686 million. “We are living in a time of many attacks. The garimpeiros [illegal miners] come, destroy the river, take the gold, and leave after making us all sick,” says Korap, who has noticed an increase in illegal mining activity near his land.

Brazilian Federal Police Commissioner Adriano Sombra, who leads the institution’s actions against environmental crimes in the north of the country, says that with the recent rise in the price of gold, criminal organizations have seen a greater incentive to invest in illegal mines in territories with difficult geographic access.

“We have had to step up operations in recent months. Many criminals are turning more to cross-border traffic by road, which was previously seen as too risky. If before, for many, it was not worth taking the risks of being stopped at the border with illegal minerals, now the price encourages them to do so,” says Sombra.

So far this year, the price of an ounce of gold has risen significantly, reaching an all-time high of $2,954.95 at the end of February, an increase of 57.7% compared to the value recorded by the precious metal in the same period last year.

“Prior to the price increase, gold was already an ideal vehicle for illicit activities, as it allows value to be moved very easily outside the financial sector,” says David Soud, director of research and analysis at consultancy IR Concilium. “The increase in its price has made gold even more attractive, as it has concentrated wealth even more,” he says.

In times of political turmoil, war, and a weak global economy, some individuals, companies and nations turn to gold to preserve their fortunes. But at the same time, gold is used in some places to evade international sanctions or launder illicit money. “The problem arises when there is no transparency,” says Julia Yansura, director of the Environmental Crime and Illicit Finance Program at the FACT Coalition. “Criminal organizations are increasingly using gold to accelerate the movement of their illicit finances, and the impact of this tends to spread to countries other than where the gold is mined.”

According to Soud, criminal groups often launder illegally mined gold very quickly after it leaves the mine. “Records are falsified, miners who do not exist are invented, and the mines are so remote that the state cannot move resources to verify them,” he explains. “The same people are often behind many companies; they set them up for a short period of time then close the front company and open new ones.”

“Gold is satisfying all the logistical needs of organized crime,” Yansura adds. “And the impact goes beyond the financial.” In countries like Brazil, measures such as the implementation of electronic tax records and the end of the “presumption of good faith” in mining declarations for sale in the formal market helped to strangle illegal gold trafficking. But the specialists interviewed by EL PAÍS maintain that once the price of the mineral increases to historic values, the notions of risk expand and crime proliferates for greater profit.

For Yansura, the fight against illegal gold trafficking must begin by expanding control over the formal legal entities that move the resources. “It is important to address this problem from the financial side. Most countries try to attack the challenge by hitting operations, but that is not effective. This is something that will require greater regional coordination in the future.”

“These practices leave a type of environmental degradation that falls on society. Massive deforestation, water pollution, and violence are direct consequences of them, and they must be stopped,” says Larissa Rodrigues, Research Director of the Escolhas Institute.

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