MESSAGE
| DATE | 2024-11-13 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] A drug gang stole 3 tons of gold in a scam for
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A drug gang stole 3 tons of gold in a scam so perfect it’s still going
Miners are plundering one of the biggest mother lodes of gold in Latin
America, led by gunmen who seized tunnels from a Chinese mining giant.
Juan Forero( with inputs from The Wall Street Journal)
BURITICÁ, Colombia—Some 700 yards deep in Colombia’s richest gold mine,
private security guards crouch behind sandbags, trapped in a failing
battle with a drug-trafficking gang that has commandeered 30 miles of
tunnels worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The air below ground is hot, humid, sometimes toxic, and the work is
dangerous—defending claustrophobic passageways against tossed explosives
and gunfire from AK-47 assault rifles. Two guards were killed and
several others wounded last year. On the other side, braving their own
dangers, are an estimated 2,000 illegal miners.
The scale of plunder is stunning. Mine owner Zijin Mining Group, a
Chinese state-controlled company, estimated that last year it lost more
than 3.2 tons of gold, worth around $200 million and equal to 38% of the
mine’s total production. The illegal mining, a slow and laborious
process that continues largely unpoliced by authorities, is a war “we
are losing,” a Zijin security official said.
Rogue miners at Zijin’s mines and elsewhere in Colombia get access,
protection and equipment from the Gulf Clan, an armed militia of some
7,000 men that moves cocaine and migrants along routes headed to the
U.S. The group seizes Zijin tunnels on behalf of illegal miners in
exchange for a cut of the spoils.
Illegal gold mining in South America has expanded in recent years,
government officials said, propelled by record-high gold prices, up 30%
this year to around $2,600 an ounce. The miners move dredges and
excavators into jungles, igniting conflicts with local indigenous
groups, and use mercury to separate gold from rock, polluting parts of
the Amazon rainforest in several countries.
As history shows, the lure of gold can be irresistible. Some of
Colombia’s trespassing miners extract $5,000 or more worth of gold a
month, a sum about equal to what business executives earn. Since 2019,
about 18 illegal miners have been killed in accidents at the Zijin mine,
company officials said.
Zijin Mining, which operates worldwide, filed a $430 million lawsuit at
the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment
Disputes, alleging Colombia authorities aren’t doing their job. Zijin
estimates that illegal miners control more than 60% of its mining
tunnels in the mountains around Buriticá, a two-hour drive from Medellín.
The company bought the mine in 2020 from Canada’s Continental Gold for
$1 billion, part of Beijing’s global push to secure minerals. Leizhong
Li, the company’s chief executive, said violent incursions have since
become a daily threat—with little help from the government.
“We tried to talk to the state all last year but didn’t see much will,”
Li said. The company estimated that Colombia lost the equivalent of $100
million in taxes and royalties last year.
Daniela Gómez, the vice minister of defense, said Colombia doesn’t have
the capacity to flush out the clandestine miners from the “subterranean
theater of operations.” The government, she said, wants to avoid violent
confrontations that might endanger civilians.
“The demands made by the company are not realistic,” said Gómez. Zijin
bought the gold-mine operation “knowing that the illegal extraction of
minerals was taking place,” she said.
Over the past four years, illegal miners have built an underground
network so vast that Zijin engineers said the mountain has started to
resemble Swiss cheese, crisscrossed with makeshift passageways and
tunnels leading from an estimated 380 aboveground entryways. The Gulf
Clan provides bunks, kitchens, bathrooms and security.
The gang also delivers sex workers, marijuana and other drugs to miners
during weeklong stints. “There’s everything there,” Dubier said.
Trench warfare
Illegal miners worm their way into the Zijin mine from a chain of small
houses perched on a mountain holding one of Latin America’s largest gold
mother lodes.
The miners use explosive charges and rock drills to penetrate bathroom
floors and bore through hundreds of yards of stone and clay. Inch by
inch, the miners excavate passageways to reach the Zijin tunnels.
Militia fighters force the retreat of Zijin security forces with
explosives and gunfire in what a company official described as trench
warfare. Zijin said it has no other recourse but to surrender the
tunnels, a retreat jeopardizing the future of its gold-mine concession.
“It happens every day,” Li said of the subterranean clashes. The company
estimated that it has had to abandon an estimated 40 tons of gold
deposits in the areas seized by the Gulf Clan and illegal miners.
Gómez, the vice minister of defense, described legal obstacles to
searching homes and arresting miners. “I can go to Buriticá tomorrow and
capture 300 people,” she said. “The judge will free them by nightfall.”
On a recent tour of the underground tunnels, Zijin’s senior security
official at the mine pointed out the wall of sandbags separating company
operations from trespassers working less than 100 yards away. The
miners’ voices carried through the darkness.
“All the mining from here to there has been lost,” he said, pointing to
the distant lights where illegal miners worked. “They advance
progressively, taking ownership.”
Miners often seize Zijin tunnels by first tossing explosives and
shooting at guards, the security official said. The miners carry jackleg
drills and set off as many as 250 detonations a day to break through
rock. Their advance has cost Zijin two of the mine’s three sections.
The richest and deepest part of the gold mine remains in company hands.
Zijin has about 4,500 workers there and at processing centers. The
company excavates around 4,000 tons of rock a day, which yields an
average of 53 pounds of gold.
“It’s a tremendous problem,” said Javier Sarmiento, an investigator
tracking mine troubles in Buriticá for Colombia’s Inspector General’s
Office, a state agency.
‘Lack of control’
****Zijin executives said the underground battle worsened after the 2022
election of leftist President Gustavo Petro.**** Past governments
welcomed foreign mining companies, including Zijin. But Petro and his
ministers have been critical of large-scale mining, saying they want to
shift the economy toward such sustainable industries as avocado farming
and tourism.
Colombia’s government says the country needs to transform the economy of
Buriticá so that citizens have a choice of better jobs. Officials say
they want to open a path for illegal miners to instead form legal
cooperatives to run small artisanal mines. Some officials have suggested
that Zijin give up some of its mine holdings to trespassers in a bid for
peace.
“There are areas in that concession where there is no exploration, no
activity whatsoever,” said Luis Álvaro Pardo, president of the state’s
National Mining Agency. “So we’re saying, ‘Look Zijin, cede some areas.’”
Previous government had more aggressive policies against armed groups,
said Li, the company’s chief executive. In 2016, Colombia launched
Operation Crete, which closed more than 250 illegal passageways into the
mine over four years.
Zijin said Colombia needed to again close off routes used by criminals
stealing company gold. “From our point of view, the policy is not
favorable to mining and the multinationals,” Li said. “How can
authorities not know this and act against this?”
The state Inspector General’s Office has asked the government to develop
a plan of action to stop the theft, Sarmiento said. Nothing has come of
the request. “It has a lot to do with politics,” he said. “The arrival
of this new government appears to have not been favorable to the situation.”
Brigadier General William Castaño, who oversees a police team assigned
to the mine, said his forces regularly confront rogue miners. “There are
interventions almost every day,” he said.
Sarmiento and Zijin executives said the state should try to cut off the
electricity that powers the drills used by illegal miners. They said
police and troops deployed in Buriticá could inspect vehicles traveling
on the single road leading to the mine. Vehicles ferry in equipment and
supplies and leave laden with stolen gold ore, according to Zijin
executives.
“This is a pure lack of control by the authorities,” Sarmiento said.
Thousands of miners have arrived from other parts of Colombia and
neighboring Venezuela to seek their fortune. Some have branched away
from Zijin’s tunnels to mine gold deposits in La Centena, a mine a few
miles away. Those miners deny Zijin’s claim that they are taking company
gold.
On a recent day, Andres Rave, an older miner at La Centena, walked
through the water and mud of a tunnel floor. He and a handful of others
have dug passageways that extend about 200 yards into the mountain.
With the light on his hard hat illuminating colorful, craggy rocks, Rave
ran his hand along a distinctive layer of minerals. “This vein that runs
here,” he said, ”this is the one that holds the gold.”
Dust particles floated in the air. Rocks underfoot had fallen from
tunnel walls and ceilings. Duber Antonio Quiros didn’t give it much
thought. He and other miners worked to reinforce man-sized tunnels with
wooden beams. Commercial miners use tunnel-boring equipment to build
passageways supported by steel and concrete. Some are large enough for
trucks.
“We small-time miners don’t have the technology the big companies have,”
Quiros said. “But this gets into your blood and becomes your passion.”
Write to Juan Forero at juan.forero-at-wsj.com
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
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Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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