(Kitco News) – The World Gold Council (WGC) has tapped former UK Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab to investigate Russia’s global ‘blood gold’ trade, which is generating billions in funding for the country’s ongoing war against Ukraine, according to a Telegraph report.
The WGC said Russian-led smuggling efforts in Africa are successfully circumventing Western sanctions even as they suppress smaller gold miners.
“The targeting of artisanal gold miners by mercenaries, terrorists and organised crime has inflicted the most appalling suffering,” Raab told the newspaper. “Meanwhile, the illicit gold plundered is funding war, terrorist groups and organised crime.”
Raab’s investigation is intended to produce recommendations on how to address the problem, such as the introduction of new industry supply chain standards and better enforcement of sanctions.
“We need concerted action to end this trade in blood gold, safeguard vulnerable communities, and choke the flow of money going to those who threaten regional and international security,” he added.
Raab’s World Gold Council investigation centers on the activities of the Wagner Group, the Russian quasi-state mercenary organization, which has been exploiting political turmoil in West Africa to plunder the region’s gold resources.
These activities were brought to light in the December 2023 ‘Blood Gold’ Report, published by the nonprofits Consumer Choice Center and 21Democracy.
The report claimed that Wagner was extracting an estimated $290 million worth of gold per year from Central African Republic’s largest gold mine, Ndassima, in exchange for propping up the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra amid the country’s ongoing civil war. Ndassima mine is believed to contain $2.8 billion in gold deposits at current prices.
The mercenaries have also targeted smaller independent miners in the region with violence in an effort to maximize their control over the flow of resources, the report said.
In Sudan, a front company controls a major refinery that has enabled the Wagner Group “to become the dominant buyer of unprocessed Sudanese gold, with multiple accounts of Russian military transport planes shipping processed gold out of the country,” the report claimed.
And in Mali, the report states that Wagner mercenaries “are paid in cash – US$10.8 million per month– by a military junta that relies on a small number of international mining companies for the majority of its tax revenue.”
The report said the Kremlin has earned more than $2.5 billion from the trade of African gold since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Once it has been extracted from the African mines, the gold is then laundered in Russia-friendly jurisdictions such as the United Arab Emirates, the report said, before being sold into the broader market.
The Blood Gold Report recommends a number of measures that the authors believe would “significantly hamper Wagner and Russia’s Blood Gold operations.”
These measures include: widening sanctions to automatically target any party that employs Wagner’s security services; introducing stringent supply chain controls to prevent blood gold infiltration; holding international mining companies accountable for business with those who employ and fund Wagner; the designation of Wagner as a terrorist group and the engagement of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in their prosecution; increased international collaboration to close gaps in the sanctions framework; and increased support to African democratic states, independent media, and civil society groups to strengthen local resilience against Wagner.
