Gov’t gets tough on gold smuggling

By Ariana Gordon

Even as local miners across the country express disappointment with what they perceived to be the slothfulness of the administration in curbing gold smuggling, Natural Resources and Environment Minister Robert Persaud said “let’s await some of the plans”. In an invited comment, Persaud said: I would say look at action… I am not going to give details.”

He noted that work is in progress and his ministry, in collaboration with other entities such as the Home Affairs Ministry, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), the Guyana Police Force (GPF), the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) as well as international agencies, is working towards minimising and eventually curtailing gold smuggling.

The issue of miners smuggling gold across Guyana’s borders has been on the table for many years. But according to some miners, government is doing nothing about it.

“The truth is there are lots of senior officials that encourage this kind of thing – it is not a hard thing to do… there is no solution as it has become a normal activity in the life of some in the sector,” one miner told Guyana Times International under condition of anonymity.

The miner said the issue goes far beyond gold smuggling, as it is also tied to the trafficking of narcotics and money laundering.”This is dangerous, people could get killed for making such statements,” this newspaper was told.

Another miner said, “This is big business here. I don’t think people on the outside understand the magnitude of what happens here… if there is no smuggling, then these people can’t compete with the gold board.” He said only 40 per cent of the gold produced here is accounted for, as “the majority is smuggled”.

The man who has spent some 12 years in Guyana’s interiors in search of gold explained that there are individuals licensed by the Guyana Gold Board (GGB) to buy gold from outside of the gold board and persons would purchase gold from them for higher prices.

“They would sell the gold to the people for a higher price… in some cases Gy$ 10,000 to Gy$ 12,000 more than the actual cost per ounce… and there are no records… but of course, if you require the records you can get it… with some modifications.”

Big money

“This is big money, you could imagine when you pay Gy$ 10,000 to Gy$ 12,000 more on an ounce of gold and you have a substantial amount how much money you are walking away with?” the miner asked rhetorically.

Large amounts of gold from Guyana’s mines are reportedly smuggled to Suriname, Brazil, possibly Venezuela, Colombia, and the United States, Guyana Times International was told. Cases of interception, this publication was informed, are few as those who smuggle the mineral across the country’s borders are “well connected”. Another miner added that those who smuggle gold would often times sell a portion of gold produced to the GGB so as to qualify for the incentives provided by the government such as duty-free concessions etcetera.

“They sell an amount to make them qualify and the rest goes outside… a lot of it is undercover, from the outside you would never know, but when you are in the fields and you look at what is happening, you only say look ‘how my country is being raped’.” “It real simple, man, not a hard task. There are ways about it and the government only talking about clamping down; if they want to clamp down, they could,” the miner said.

He opined that the increase in the number of persons that have begun mining over the last five years is a representation of the “benefits accrued from smuggling gold”. Asked about the prevalence of raids in mining communities, one 22-year-old miner said: “That don’t happen here… who raiding?”

Asked about the rate of conviction and success in catching those who conduct the illicit trade, Minister Persaud said, “I have to do research on that… it is very difficult.”

A representative of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) told this publication that the association has no unified position on the issue, but “there are lots of speculations that there are large numbers of operations”.

The official added that there is a leak somewhere, but “to say there is smuggling and where the gold is being smuggled to is a difficult task”. The official said there could be many reasons for the low production or declaration by some miners, pointing specifically to methods used to recover gold.

“They are sometimes not recovering enough… there are little lands being opened up and there is the reworking of the land… the same land so that’s may be an explanation for under declarations,” he said, adding the systems used by some miners are archaic he said terming them “inefficient”.

There is a large number of Brazilian nationals in Guyana’s mining sector, with many of them operating illegally, a fact that led the administration to implement “Operation El Dorado.” Government has said repeatedly that it will not condone illegal mining by anyone.