About a quarter of Ecuador’s gold exports from small-scale mining in 2023 originated from just three companies: Rockgolden, Rocadorada and Soul Metals. Their exports of $268 million in gold just to the United Arab Emirates and India was about 20 times more than the same trade the year before. A months-long investigation of their activities by Mongabay and Codigo Vidrio suggests that the exports were made via a web of falsified certificates and permits from nonexistent mines, abetted by lax governmental oversight. The last few years have seen booming business for small-scale gold mining in Ecuador. For the first time since 2020, exports from small-scale gold producers reached $1.26 billion in 2023, surpassing the $1.17 billion worth of shipments of Canada’s Aurelian, the only large, formal gold mining company in Ecuador. The boon comes as organized crime has tightened its chokehold on artisanal and illegal gold mining in Ecuador, through violence and extortion; murder rates increased fivefold between 2019 and 2023, affecting in particular Indigenous communities and the resource-rich, fragile ecosystems of Ecuador’s Amazonian regions. As journalists in this collaboration followed a paper trail of falsified documents, on Sept. 2 Ecuadorian police and prosecutors raided the country’s Mining Regulation and Control Agency (ARCOM), as well as the Ministry of Energy and Mines, as part of an investigation into irregularities in authorizing new mining permits and concessions for small-scale mining. Although the mining registry that ARCOM managed was suspended in early 2018, between 2019 and 2024 the agency still granted more…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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