Can the illicit gold trade be stopped?

Summary

The Inquiry – Can the Illicit Gold Trade Be Stopped?

Podcast: The Inquiry, BBC World Service
Host: Tanya Beckett
Date: July 21, 2026

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Overview

This episode investigates the global rise of the illicit gold trade—a shadowy marketplace financing conflicts, empowering criminal gangs, and often flourishing in the world’s most unstable regions. Gold’s soaring value, its fungibility, and its capacity as an untraceable asset make it a prime commodity for both economic actors and illicit organizations. Through interviews with finance experts, researchers, and policy advisors, the episode explores how illegal gold mining fuels wars, the tangled supply chains that launder “blood gold,” and whether effective intervention is possible.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Gold’s Unique Properties and Global Role

[03:25–08:49] Campbell Harvey, Professor of Finance, Duke University

• Fungibility and Anonymity:
  • “Gold is what we call a fungible asset… You can melt it into whatever shape you want. Nobody can tell where it came from.” (Campbell Harvey, 03:25)
• Tangible Uses:
  • Gold is vital for jewelry (50% of demand), technology (including phones), and dentistry.
  • Its chemical properties (softness, non-tarnishing) have contributed to centuries of value.
• Safe Haven Status:
  • Gold is a go-to investment in times of crisis. When markets tumble, investors seek shelter in gold, buoying demand and price.
• Geopolitical Tool:
  • Central banks diversify with gold amid distrust in US debt; sanctioned countries use gold to bypass international financial restrictions.
  • “There are various countries that have been sanctioned… But they have gold… it is anonymous.” (Campbell Harvey, 07:44)
• Role in Conflict:
  • During wars, gold is more reliable than local currency for transacting, given the uncertainty of value.

2. Illicit Gold as a Conflict Driver

[10:18–14:55] Dan Watson, Research Associate, International Institute for Strategic Studies

• Conflict Zones:
  • New gold discoveries in Africa’s Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, Sudan) have triggered “gold rushes” in unstable nations.
  • Armed groups, including insurgents and jihadists, control mining areas or “tax” gold shipments.
• Sudan as a Case Study:
  • Loss of oil fields led Sudan to boost gold production, which now heavily funds ongoing conflict.
  • “Groups… were able to harness those link[s] to move gold that was produced… to obtain war financing and hard currency.” (Dan Watson, 11:21)
• Small-Scale Producers:
  • Artisanal miners are vulnerable to exploitation and control by armed groups and corrupted officials.
  • Smuggling is facilitated by gold’s portability: “It’s very easy to smuggle small amounts of it hidden on the person.” (Dan Watson, 12:23)
• Supply Chain Blending:
  • Illicit gold is mixed with legitimate sources. Technical advances can help with origin tracing, but training and enforcement lag.
• Trade Hubs:
  • Large volumes pass through the UAE and, increasingly, East African markets like Ethiopia and Somalia.
  • UAE has stepped up compliance and anti-money laundering measures.

3. The Colombian Shift: Gold vs. Cocaine

[16:45–20:39] Bram Abus, Consultant, International Crisis Group; Co-Director, Amazon Underworld

• Profit Motive:
  • “Illegal gold mining is a bigger criminal industry than cocaine trafficking.… High gold prices are just too big to ignore for organized crime.” (Bram Abus, 16:45)
• Migration of Illicit Labor:
  • Cocaine-producing regions see migration of laborers to gold mining for better pay and perceived lower risk.
• Lower Risk Profile:
  • Penalties for illegal gold extraction are far less severe than the cocaine trade; gold can be easily laundered into legal markets.
• Armed Group Involvement:
  • Crime syndicates provide equipment for miners, then tax output or directly control mines—often making civilians bear the brunt of law enforcement crackdowns.
• Targeting Issues:
  • State action often punishes low-level workers rather than the criminal masterminds.
  • “They're really going for the lowest edge of a very sophisticated criminal industry.… [The state] should go after the money flow, hit the criminals where it hurts, seize their assets, bank accounts, go after the intellectual authors of these crimes.” (Bram Abus, 20:09)

4. International Efforts & the Path Forward

[20:46–24:52] Louis Marechal, Senior Advisor, Minerals, OECD

• Following the Money:
  • By targeting financiers and those enabling trade, authorities can strike at the core of illicit gold operations.
  • “Awareness has become greater that you actually need to go after the money.… The enforcement response has moved from… targeting the miners themselves to… targeting more the players downstream… the financiers, the bankers, logistic players… It's becoming a bit more comprehensive.” (Louis Marechal, 21:31)
• Community Alternatives:
  • Lasting impact depends on providing legal avenues for small-scale miners to earn a living, thereby weakening reliance on criminal groups.
• Supply Chain Scrutiny:
  • Major refiners and manufacturers need rigorous due diligence to keep illicit gold out of legal supply chains.
  • “Better and more due diligence performed by companies throughout supply chains… to be better able to identify if that gold production was connected to risks such as conflict financing…” (Louis Marechal, 23:40)
• Private Sector’s Fundamental Role:
  • Large mining companies' and refineries’ interests (legitimacy, market access) can support anti-illicit trade efforts, but may also conflict with local needs.
• Ongoing Battle:
  • “It’s always going to be a race between the illegal actors and [the] legal actors. But the systemic risk that illegal gold creates… is probably getting close to unbearable. So the enforcement needs to step up and get even more impactful.” (Louis Marechal, 24:52)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Gold’s Untraceability:
  “Even if you got a gold bar with a serial number on it, that's irrelevant once it's melted down.”
  (Campbell Harvey, 07:44)

• Artefacts of Conflict:
  “Gold has become a key source of financing for the country's civil war that has forced more than 14 million people from their homes…”
  (Tanya Beckett, 01:38)

• Shifting Criminal Focus:
  “Illegal gold mining is a bigger criminal industry than cocaine trafficking.”
  (Bram Abus, 16:45)

• Community Impact:
  “Many of these communities would like to have a sustainable economic alternative, but if there simply is none, of course you get involved in illegal gold mining just to make ends meet.”
  (Bram Abus, 20:09)

• Enforcement Challenge:
  “It’s always going to be a race between the illegal actors and illegal actors. But the systemic risk that illegal gold creates for the financial system... is getting close to unbearable.”
  (Louis Marechal, 24:52)

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Important Timestamps

• Main Theme Introduction: 01:38
• Gold’s Properties and Global Demand: 03:25–08:49
• Illicit Gold in African Conflict: 10:18–14:55
• Colombian Gold Mining vs. Cocaine: 16:45–20:39
• International Supply Chains & Enforcement: 20:46–24:52
• Conclusion and Final Word: 24:09–25:15

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Conclusion

The episode concludes that while completely stopping illicit gold production may be unrealistic, tightening scrutiny and cutting off financial flows are crucial. Enhanced coordination between governments, international agencies, and the private sector—paired with efforts to grant miners legal, sustainable livelihoods—offer the best hope of reducing the deadly and destabilizing impacts of illicit gold.

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For more investigative episodes, search for “The Inquiry” on your podcast platform and explore the BBC’s extensive archive.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

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[Tanya Beckett]

Welcome to the Inquiry from the BBC World Service. I'm Tanya Beckett. Each week, one question, four expert witnesses and an answer. The European Union has banned the purchase, import and transfer of gold from Sudan, one of Africa's biggest producers. Gold has become a key source of financing for the country's civil war that has forced more than 14 million people from their homes and the underlying reason is its price. In the last 20 years, the value of gold on the international market has multiplied by a factor of five. Traditionally seen as a safe haven, the precious metal has been riding a wave of global uncertainty and worries about inflation. For investors, mining companies and even central banks who have large holdings of the metal, such as the United States, Germany and France, the rise has added up to an extraordinary win. But for criminal gangs, it's also offered an opportunity. In July of this year, the head of the World Gold Council warned that the high price of gold has led to a surge in illicit activity. At over $120 billion, underground trade now accounts for around a fifth of of the total market. This so called blood gold is mostly mined by artisanal and small scale miners who are forced to work for criminal gangs and insurgent groups. The metal can then be sold to finance conflict. This week on the inquiry we're asking can the illicit gold trade be stopped? Part 1 All that glisters

[Campbell Harvey]

Gold is what we call a fungible asset. So what I mean by that one five pound note is exactly equal to another five pound note. So those notes are fungible gold. You can melt it into whatever shape you want. Nobody can tell where it came from. It is just gold. It is an element. It is on the periodic table.

[Tanya Beckett]

Before we take a look at how gold has come to play such a key role in violent conflict, we need to establish why its properties make it so useful and adaptable in this context. Campbell Harvey is Professor of Finance at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. In the United States.

[Campbell Harvey]

So gold has many tangible uses. Gold is used in jewelry. Half of the demand for gold is for jewelry. Gold is used in technology. So your phone has got gold in it. And gold to a lesser degree is also used for dentistry around the world. Gold is a soft metal. It doesn't tarnish the way that silver or copper tarnishes, so remains shiny. So I think that that historically gave gold the advantage.

[Tanya Beckett]

Gold has been a prized metal thousands of years. In ancient Egypt it was elevated to a divine status and considered the flesh of the gods. Later mining was famously industrialized by the Romans in Europe. Then in the late 19th century, investment in gold shifted from a niche commodity to the backbone of global economics. When the so called gold standard monetary system was set up, this allowed countries currencies to be backed by a fixed amount of the metal. In recent years, interest in gold has surged again in the face of global uncertainty. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, the price has gone from around 700 to $800 for 1 ounce or in metric terms 3 grams to highs of over $4,000. In the last three years alone, it has doubled in value.

[Campbell Harvey]

So gold is perceived as a safe haven. And this also adds to its attractiveness as an investment asset and a store of value. So in a financial crisis, the track record of gold is very favorable. So if you look at times when the stock market goes down, it's often the case that gold has got a positive return and people are abandoning very risky assets and going to what they perceive to be the safe have driving up demand. And gold actually does well.

[Tanya Beckett]

Many governments who are concerned that high borrowing levels in the United states make holding U.S. government debt more risky have shifted their funds elsewhere.

[Campbell Harvey]

Many countries are diversifying away from US dollar holdings. And we've seen that amongst central banks it is now the case that they hold more value in gold than US dollar assets. So this is a change, a swing away from the US dollar and not saying in the short term or even the medium term, the dollar will lose its reserve currency status. But we have seen a very logical progression of diversification. We don't want all our eggs in one basket for one country's currency and bonds. We want to diversify. Gold is something that has got a long track record of reliability. It has held its value over millennia. Maybe we should increase our holdings of this particular asset.

[Tanya Beckett]

It's worth emphasizing here that gold, like many other commodities, has an internationally recognised price. This means it can be used as payment even when governments are isolated from the global political stage and precluded from receiving money from other nation.

[Campbell Harvey]

There are various countries that have been sanctioned so that they cannot use the standard plumbing of our financial system, for example, the swift messaging system that allows for transfers amongst banks. But they have gold and they can use that gold and people receiving that gold, it's not identified as gold from country X, because gold is completely fungible. It is anonymous, you just melt it down. And even if you got a gold bar with a serial number on it, that's irrelevant once it's melted down. So a government might support an uprising in Africa and doesn't want to be officially seen as supporting that uprising. And instead of using the banking system and transferring cash, they transfer gold.

[Tanya Beckett]

When countries are involved in wars, their economies are often under strain, making them unreliable trading partners. Here, gold can offer a more solid alternative for payment.

[Campbell Harvey]

And if you're at war, if you're buying equipment, the seller of the munitions might be hesitant to take your local currency because it's not clear what will happen to that currency, given that you're at war. So it's a lot safer to accept either some sort of payment in kind or take delivery of the payment in gold.

[Tanya Beckett]

During World War I, Britain used a significant portion of its gold reserves in part to finance the war effort. Meanwhile, Nazi Germany looted gold from the central banks of occupied nations and Holocaust victims to trade with neutral countries like Switzerland and Sweden. And gold's role in warfare has by no means gone away. In fact, in recent years, it seems to have grown. Time for our second Expert Witness, part two, Gilded Conflict. We've mentioned that the price of gold has risen substantially since the financial crisis. This has led to mining becoming profitable in areas where it would previously have not been worthwhile. In Africa, for example, mining has rapidly expanded its geographical reach and this can in turn fuel disputes over the ownership of land. Dan Watson is a research associate at the International Institute for strategic studies, based in London.

[Dan Watson]

There has been a set of new discoveries, Particularly in sub Saharan Africa's sahel region after 2010. And what this did was lead to gold rushes taking place in quite unstable countries, Particularly in Mali and Burkina Faso, and also in Sudan as well. In the case of the Sahelian states, Particularly in Burkina Faso and Mali, we're also seeing a number of jihadist insurgents Becoming involved in the gold trade, either through control of mining areas or through taxing gold as it moves through transport corridors that they control.

[Tanya Beckett]

Sudan is a particularly acute example of how gold can play into major conflicts. Traditionally an oil nation, the government pivoted to gold after the secession of south Sudan in 2011, led to the loss of its drilling fields. Sudan has since become one of Africa's largest gold producers. When conflict later reignited in the country, it was heavily bankrolled by gold.

[Dan Watson]

Gold has been an increasingly important part of the Sudanese economy. And when the war began, groups with existing interests in the gold sector were able to harness those link to move gold that was produced, sometimes in larger scale mines, sometimes in smaller mining areas, across borders, in particular through South Sudan and to Uganda, in order to obtain war financing and hard currency.

[Tanya Beckett]

In many cases, the gold is produced by small local operations which can be readily controlled by armed militia.

[Dan Watson]

A lot of illicit gold will be artisanally mined by small scale and usually informal miners. That will be things like panning for gold or quite basic pit mining. And it makes it much easier to be captured by criminal groups, non state armed groups, or by corrupt elements of the state.

[Tanya Beckett]

And as we have already learned, gold is pretty straightforward to move around.

[Dan Watson]

One of the key attributes of gold is that it's very easy to smuggle small amounts of it Hidden on the person, as it were. And that makes it very attractive for different armed groups and various unsavory characters to become become involved in the gold smuggling sector.

[Tanya Beckett]

But the mining business is much more than simply the mine itself. There are multiple links in the chain. Before gold reaches the consumer, after having been dug out of the ground, it must be refined, transported, and sold.

[Dan Watson]

Once it leaves mining areas, There can be a kind of secondary economy around taxing. You tend to see towns or small market hubs kind of emerging where gold will be sold, traded, and might undergo a basic kind of process of refining from which it is then exported onto external markets. There are various ways in which the mechanisms of that trade work, but the outcome is often very similar, which is that whoever is producing and moving the gold will receive cash. And that cash can then be reinvested either into the war effort or into sustaining transactional political systems where money and favors are the kind of currency within those systems.

[Tanya Beckett]

Once it is sold, gold can be made to effectively disappear.

[Dan Watson]

As illicit gold moves out of a conflict area, it can be gradually melted down and blended in with legitimate sources of gold as well, and this can make it very difficult to establish the origin of where gold comes from. There are ways in which there have been progress in terms of chemical testing of gold or scanning of the gold that might make it easier to determine the actual origin of gold. But that requires training for border guards and sanders agencies to make sure that gold is not being admitted. That comes from areas where there is a high risk that it is being used to finance conflicts.

[Tanya Beckett]

But as we've said, gold's value comes from the fact that it is an international market with a recognized value all over the world.

[Dan Watson]

And Sudanese gold? The bulk of it goes to the United Arab Emirates via Uganda or South Sudan. Some of it is also smuggled out to the west through Chad. The UAE has become a major hub for gold, both licit and illicit, though it's important to note that a lot of gold may make its way to the uae, but it doesn't necessarily stay there. It can be re exported to other markets and increasingly in parts of East Africa. Gold is being rooted via Ethiopia or Somalia and is making its way to markets in Asia as well.

[Tanya Beckett]

The UAE has responded by intensifying compliance checks across its gold sector as part of its attempts to strengthen anti money laundering controls.

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[Tanya Beckett]

you're listening to the inquiry from the BBC World Service. We're about to get into part three, but before we do, I just wanted to let you know that there is a huge archive of previous episodes available to listen to, including Our Diamonds Forever in Botswana. Just search for the inquiry wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're there, click subscribe and turn on push notifications so you never miss a thing. Now back to this inquiry. We said that the rise in the value of gold has meant that many more mines have sprung up. But it's not just the price which has attracted criminals and armed groups. It's also the fact that all around the world, it can be bought and sold perfectly legally. Time for our third expert witness, Part three. Colombia.

[Bram Abus]

With absolute certainty, we can say that illegal gold mining is a bigger criminal industry than cocaine trafficking. Right now, the high gold prices are just too big to ignore for organized crime.

[Tanya Beckett]

Colombia is the world's biggest producer of cocaine. It grows over 60% of the world's total supply. But it's also a major producer of gold, ranking among the top 20 countries in the world. Bram Abus is a consultant for the International Crisis Group and founder and co director of Amazon Underworld, an investigative journalism platform dedicated to covering crime trends in the Amazon. He says the gold price boom has shifted the hunt for wealth in Colombia from harvesting cocoa leaves to digging up the precious metal.

[Bram Abus]

Suddenly, on satellite imagers, we see mining pits scarring the landscapes. For example, regions that are known for the cocaine industry with huge coca plantations and a lot of manual labor working in these coca field. Many of those people are migrating to nearby gold mines because the pay is higher and also risks are lower.

[Tanya Beckett]

Not only are the financial rewards better from mining gold, but the threat of legal punishment is rather less intimidating.

[Bram Abus]

Recently we see a huge migration of the efforts of organized crime syndicates to also get involved in gold mining and the trafficking of illicit gold, especially as prices on international markets have been rising. The risks of gold mining are lower compared to the cocaine industry because cocaine never will be a legal commodity. So if you get caught, prison sentences are pretty frightening for those involved in the drug trafficking industry. But when we look at gold, it's actually very easy to launder illicit gold into the legal supply chain.

[Tanya Beckett]

All these factors have led to a shift from illegal drugs to to illicit gold.

[Bram Abus]

What we see in Colombia, unfortunately, is that communities have been traditionally mining for gold, but these areas are also very much affected by conflict dynamics. We have groups, they control gold mining areas and they actually want small scale northeastinal miners to beef up their production.

[Tanya Beckett]

And this beefing up of production is achieved by rebel groups ploughing money back into local mining operations.

[Bram Abus]

What they're doing is they're bringing in bigger equipment, backhoes, refuges, or they finance miners to buy the equipment, put them to work and then either tax their production or they directly run the mines and take most of its production and then pay a day wage to these miners.

[Tanya Beckett]

This intertwining of crime gangs with local communities makes unpicking the trail of illicit gold particularly difficult.

[Bram Abus]

The mining equipment never is property of the armed troops. They just finance it. That also means that if state forces come in and blow up all these mining machines, that it's not the armed group who is losing their property, but rather the civilians they borrowed money to. Which means that the armed group will always get the revenue, never runs the risk, and will make civilians pay if they suffer from state crackdowns.

[Tanya Beckett]

When the government tries to crack down, it often targets the wrong people.

[Bram Abus]

They're really going for the lowest edge of a very sophisticated criminal industry. And this has not been effective. So what we argue is that state actually should go after the money flow, hit the criminals where it hurts, seize their assets, bank accounts, go after the intellectual authors of these crimes. Many of these communities would like to have a sustainable economic alternative, but if there simply is none, of course you get involved in illegal gold mining just to make ends meet.

[Tanya Beckett]

Time for our fourth expert witness, Part four, International action.

[Louis Marechal]

Gold is highly attractive because of its value. It's fairly easy to produce, fairly easy to refine, very easy to transport and to trade internationally. What is concerning is really the expansion of gold gold operations on the ground, across countries and across continents.

[Tanya Beckett]

Louis Marechal is senior advisor on minerals at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD is a body that helps set global standards and has been a central force in providing guidance for how governments and companies combat the mining and trade of illicit gold. Louis agrees with our third expert witness that to clamp down on illicit gold, authorities need to target the groups that fund it.

[Louis Marechal]

Increasingly in the past five years, I think the awareness has become greater that you actually need to go after the money. So go after the people that are pre financing the trade, benefiting from trade operations, and ultimately trying to launder the money coming from other illegal activities. So I think the enforcement response has moved from one that is very focused on targeting the miners themselves to actually now targeting more the players downstream and also looking at people that are enabling the gold production to take place. So the financiers, the bankers, logistic players as well. It's becoming a bit more comprehensive.

[Tanya Beckett]

Cutting the line of finance appears to be a logical approach, but it only works if local communities are able to find other means to support their families.

[Louis Marechal]

The source of funding for most of artisanal and Small scale gold operation remains illegal. One of the challenge and the ambition is to identify a suitable legal alternative to those illegal financiers and illegal supporters of gold production. How do you create those sustainable, durable incentives to formalize artisanal and small scale miners and include them in global supply chains?

[Tanya Beckett]

Louis says that international agencies have stepped up their operations over the last decade and are working together more closely. But also the role of the private sector is pivotal.

[Louis Marechal]

So the interest of the large scale mining sector is really quite aligned with interest of governments. To some extent it's to ensure the development of a legitimate and legal mining sector that can bring production to global international markets. But obviously that clashes sometimes with the more immediate needs of local mining communities around them. So a lot of efforts deployed by large scale mining companies and their industry association focus on better managing the interaction between artisanal and small scale miners and large scale mining industries further away from the mines.

[Tanya Beckett]

Louis says firms involved in refining or manufacture need to become much more rigorous about where the gold they are using originates from.

[Louis Marechal]

You also need to have better and more due diligence performed by companies throughout supply chains. What we mean by that is distinct efforts to identify the provenance of their gold and to be better able to identify if that gold production was connected to risks such as conflict financing or serious abuses of human rights or serious economic crime. So there is a role that needs to be played by the private sector, which is fundamental.

[Tanya Beckett]

Now we return to our question. Can the illicit gold trade be stopped? For over a decade, the price of gold has risen in tandem with global economic turbulence and geopolitical uncertainty. This has led to a surge of new mines. Often the producers are small, local operations, and in areas where there is gun crime or armed insurgency, they can easily fall into the wrong hands. The mining of illicit gold may be impossible to completely stop, but governments and companies can do a better job of coordinating between themselves and making it harder for the money to end up being used to buy weapons. A final word from our fourth expert witness.

[Louis Marechal]

It's always going to be a race between the illegal actors and illegal actors. But the systemic risk that illegal gold creates for the financial system in some parts of the world is probably getting close to unbearable. So the enforcement needs to step up and get even more impactful.

[Tanya Beckett]

You've been listening to the Inquiry from the BBC World Service. If you want to hear more like this, you can select from our large archive of previous episodes, including why does Ebola keep coming back? Or Is the revolution in Cuba over? Just search for the inquiry wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there, click subscribe and turn on push notifications so you never miss a thing. This episode of the Inquiry was written and presented by me, Tanya Beckett. The producer was Jill Collins, researcher Amelia Cox, editor Tom Bigwood and technical producer Cameron Ward. A moment in time captured by what

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[Campbell Harvey]

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[Bram Abus]

We're going to be nuts. What they saw I put my head down. I saw the movie of my life

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[Tanya Beckett]

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[Campbell Harvey]

I still remember the smell of the

[Tanya Beckett]

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[Dan Watson]

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[Tanya Beckett]

Stories from people with first hand accounts of events that have shaped our world.

[Dan Watson]

At the end, Kissinger called me into his office and he said he did a good job. I left the office with tears in my eyes.

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Listen now. Search for Witness history wherever you get your BBC podcasts

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