BRASILIA, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Brazil's central bank and
other government agencies are studying the adoption of
electronic tax receipts for buying and selling gold in order to
track whether it was illegally mined, the bank said in documents
published on Monday.
The move is aimed at cracking down on illegal gold mining
that has led to the invasions of protected lands in the Amazon
rainforest and indigenous reservations where wildcat miners have
brought malaria, armed violence and malnutrition in a
humanitarian tragedy.
The central bank said the goal was to implement "a new
inspection system that allows the traceability of the gold
extracted, as well as the adoption of electronic invoices,"
according to a notice sent to the country's Supreme Court.
The bank said it could only intervene once the gold enters
the financial system as an asset.
Half of the 100 tonnes of gold produced each year by Brazil,
or about 52 tonnes, is thought to be illegally mined and
laundered by financial brokerages that are regulated by the
central bank, which does not currently know if the gold it buys
is legal or illegal, mining industry lobby group Ibram said.
The mining lobby has been calling for the adoption of
electronic invoices to end the illegal gold trade, Ibram
President Raul Jungmann said.
Brazil's new leftist government last week launched an
enforcement operation to removed some 20,000 wildcat miners from
the Yanomami reservation on the border with Venezuela after
declaring a medical emergency due to deaths from malnutrition.
The miners devastated much of the reservation that is the
size of Portugal, polluting rivers with mercury used to extract
the gold, terrorizing the Yanomami and reducing the game they
hunt.
Jungmann, whose lobby represents multinational and large
domestic mining firms operating in Brazil, asked the government
to take steps to break a network that launders illegal gold
through the financial system for sale to jewelry makers and
export to countries like Switzerland and Britain.
Currently, gold is sold with paper receipts based on the
"good faith" of the seller, making it impossible to trace the
origin of the gold.
Illegal mining surged along with deforestation in the Amazon
during the previous far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro.
The new administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva has revoked some of Bolsonaro's policies that eased off
environmental protections. It has pledged to stop deforestation
in the Amazon, a biome whose health is considered vital in the
fight against climate change.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle
Editing by Marguerita Choy)
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