Brazilian police busts gang that moved 3 tonnes of illegal Amazon gold

11/9/2024 7:22

        Brazilian police carried out a wide operation against illegal mining in the Amazon on Monday, raiding a criminal organization that financed the production and sale of 3.1 tonnes of gold whose origin was hidden with fraudulent papers.
        
        Federal police said in a statement that the majority of the arrests and two dozen search and seizure warrants served were in the south of Para state, where illegal gold mining has surged in recent years in the rainforest, much of that on protected Indigenous reservation land.
        
        "We found that at least 3.14 tons of illegally extracted gold had been laundered using fraudulent statements of the origin of the ore," the statement said.
        
        Much of the gold was refined in Sao Jose do Rio Preto, a city in the north of Sao Paulo state that has a thriving jewelry industry and where illegal gold is melted down into ingots with legal gold, making it hard to trace the illegal metal.