Illegal gold trafficking between Ecuador and Peru remains uncontrolled

Every day, 100 tons of raw material, with which the gold extracted from Peru is processed, are smuggled to Ecuador, through a route in the Amazon region controlled by illegal miners, in collaboration with transnational criminal organizations, confirmed a recent investigation by the newspaper Peruvian El Comercio. The route begins in the province of Condorcanqui, Peru, and ends in the province of Zamora Chinchipe, Ecuador.

Peruvian nonprofit Paz y Esperanza also identified 53 illegal mining sites along a 38-kilometer stretch of the Cenepa River in the Amazon region, near the border with Ecuador. Without official authorization, illegal miners carry out works of public benefit in exchange for permission from communities to operate, revealed the Peruvian investigative outlet Public Eyeon March 17th.

“In these Amazon border areas, profits from drug trafficking are often reinvested in illegal gold mining,” he explained to Dialogue, on March 30, Bram Ebus, consultant for the NGO International Crisis Group, based in Belgium. “Gold is an extremely useful commodity for laundering drug trafficking assets, because gold of illegal origin is very easy to be legalized in the illicit chain.”

Peruvian leaders from several remote indigenous communities situated in the Amazon region bordering Ecuador lament the lack of state support, saying illegal mining makes other economies illegal, such as logging, human trafficking and drug trafficking. take root on their land, the news network reported APon March 19.

“Of the 10 criminal economies that exist in the country, this is by far the largest, as it affects fundamental rights, tax collection and the environment,” former Peruvian Interior Minister Carlos Basombrío told the magazine From within, from the National Society of Mining, Petroleum and Energy of Peru. “There are new mafias and criminal organizations, especially international ones, that are entering some areas to compete for control of this activity with the original illegal miners. These criminal organizations are linked to drug trafficking and establish themselves in areas where there are problems of violence.”

“These are dynamics that we are observing in these regions and we know that there is a low State presence, both in Peru and Ecuador”, adds Ebus. “It also means that organized crime can expand.”

In the border area between the two countries, the leaders of smuggling and illegal mining operate “at will”, under the protection of corrupt police officers, revealed the Peruvian weekly newspaper Hildebrant in his Trece.

“We always see a convergence between illegal and legal economies in these Amazon border areas”, declares Ebus. “Therefore, we can consider that one business feeds another business, but both sectors have an environmental impact, illegal profits are doubled with reinvestment and environmental impacts are multiplied when money from drug trafficking is reinvested in illegal mining.”

The Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation, a territory of 1.3 million hectares between the regions of Loreto and Amazonas, in Peru, also denounced the advance of illegal miners in the concave of the Santiago River. It is estimated that around 40 hectares of forest were damaged by this activity, he said. Radio France Internationalon March 22.

In March 2023, the Environment Ministers of Ecuador and Peru met in the border area to analyze the issue of illegal mining, considered a threat to public security. In response to this threat, the armed forces of Ecuador and Peru launched a series of coordinated special operations on the binational border.

According to the Ecuadorian newspaper Firstfruitsthe fight against illegal mining has been one of the focal points of mirror operations carried out by the armed forces of both countries on the border, which also combat drug trafficking, trafficking in weapons, ammunition and explosives, smuggling, irregular immigration and others related crimes.

“The definitive and fundamental solution is to obtain full traceability of gold production. This will allow us to understand the dimension of the problem and how to face it, so that there is a sustainable formalization over time”, said Victor Gobitz, president of the National Society of Mining, Petroleum and Energy of Peru, the El Comercio. “In informal mining, explosives are used in cartridges. However, all large-scale mining and some medium-scale mining use explosives in bulk, not cartridges. So, it is not that difficult to attack the problem, since only five companies sell explosives for mining in Peru.”