Experts: African Gold Helps Fund Russia’s War With Ukraine
ADF STAFF
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, it has extracted at least $2.5 billion worth of gold from Africa through illicit operations facilitated by its paramilitary forces.
That money, taken from artisanal and small-scale mines in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Guinea, Libya, Mali and Sudan, “has been funneled back into the Russian war machine,” according to a World Gold Council report published in November.
“The mysterious death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group, in a plane crash in August 2023, has not curtailed Russia’s looting and pillaging of natural resources around the world — from Libya to the Central African Republic (CAR),” the report said. “Instead, the Kremlin has seized the moment to wrest back control over those lucrative business interests.”
Experts say the gold is moved through intricate, illegal international schemes.
“We’re seeing a great deal of gold being sold, smuggled and refined and effectively laundered through the Middle East, in particular the UAE [United Arab Emirates], in the Dubai gold market,” political analyst Jessica Berlin told National Public Radio (NPR). “Also, via China and Hong Kong, there are very, very extensive and complex front companies, shell companies being used to move the money.”
Berlin, co-author of 2023’s “The Blood Gold Report,” said the gold is transported on trucks and planes to those countries, where it is melted down and mixed with legally sourced gold. Berlin’s report focused on Russia’s gold mining work in the CAR, Mali and Sudan.
“These countries are where Russia’s blood gold trade has really taken off,” Berlin told NPR. “They’re the primary targets for Russia’s operations in the gold industry.”
In the CAR, Russian Africa Corps mercenaries have committed massacres at artisanal mining sites. At least 20 artisanal miners in Koki were killed in mid-June after failing to attend a meeting called by the mercenaries. After the meeting, the mercenaries attacked the mining sites surrounding Koki, according to the CAR’s Corbeau News Centrafrique (CNC).
About a week later, Africa Corps fighters called a meeting of stakeholders in the town’s mining sector. According to CNC, the mercenaries declared that no one was allowed to buy gold on the site and that anyone who did would be executed. The mercenaries designated six people as middlemen to buy gold exclusively for them. Any violation of that rule, they said, also was punishable by death.
The mercenaries then confiscated everything the miners and traders brought to the meeting, including mobile phones, gold reserves, valuable tools and cash.
Russian mercenaries also are known to take over mining operations with help from government forces in countries led by military juntas with ties to the Kremlin.
In February, for example, Africa Corps fighters arrived by helicopter near the rural Malian village of Intahaka in the Gao region and seized the country’s largest artisanal gold mine. With the help of the Malian military, the mercenaries secured the site by forcing out a Tuareg rebel group.
In August, junta-led Burkina Faso granted Russian gold mining company Nordgold a four-year license to operate a new gold mine in the North Central region, where Nordgold already operated three gold mines.
According to the Norbert Zongo Cell for Investigative Journalism in West Africa, Nordgold in 2018 raked in $16.5 million in gold mining royalties thanks to a low tax deal made with a former Burkinabe government 15 years earlier. The money could have funded vital public services.
There is “no single panacea to eliminate the risks” tied to Russia’s pursuit of African gold, the World Gold Council report said. It called for international, government and business actors to develop a strategic plan to expand law enforcement, reinforce sanctions and offer incentives for artisanal gold mining communities to formalize.
“International coordination needs to be improved, and a single primary forum should be agreed for bringing together the otherwise siloed efforts to boost implementation and enforcement,” the report said.