Launched in 2019, the Ouro Target program is creating a database with samples obtained from different parts of Brazil.
The information is allowing the Federal Police to create a chemical “fingerprint” of each sample, which can be used to compare the origin of the seized or suspected gold.
This strategy can be supplemented with other methods, including physically marking gold or tracking transactions using blockchain technology.
Although technology can be a great ally in the fight against the illegal gold trade, experts say that the country still needs stricter regulation for the sector.
PORTO VELHO, Brazil – Sailing north on a speedboat on the Madeira River, signs of the exponential growth of illegal gold mining in the country are everywhere: mounds of sand extracted from the riverbed appear on the banks, and dozens of steaming dredges operate at full steam.
Mongabay visited the region in November 2022, just weeks after a police operation that destroyed dozens of these dredgers. But with gold prices hovering at near-record levels , for many groups of illegal miners, the potential profits outweigh the risks.
In January, Brazilian security forces launched a long-awaited crackdown to rid the Yanomami Indigenous Land of thousands of illegal miners. Since then, dredgers and other mining equipment have been destroyed, as well as aircraft, and authorities have restricted air traffic to disrupt food and fuel supply routes to the mines.
But at over 500 million hectares – an area ten times the size of the state of California – the Brazilian Amazon is too big to be policed by people.
Therefore, it is essential to use advanced forensic techniques to make complex and time-consuming investigations: identify the origins of illegal gold, arrest well-funded gangs of gold miners and block the illegal trade that destroys forests, destroys indigenous communities and poisons rivers and natural habitats.
“One thing that many delegates and judges, legal operators in general, wanted to know is: 'is it possible to determine the origin of the gold, is this possible, is it feasible? coordinator of the Ouro Target program of the Federal Police. “And that is the question we are trying to answer.”
Ouro Alvo was launched in 2019, when illegal mining in Brazil was gaining pace. Since then, police experts have been collecting samples and carrying out analyzes in order to be able to identify the gold that comes from different regions of the country, whether from the Yanomami land or the Madeira River.
In these analyses, specialists combine different methodologies to obtain information about the molecular composition of gold, its atomic structure and the morphological characteristics of each sample.
Based on this information, the police are creating a collection of exclusive gold signatures for each of the country's mining regions and feeding a database called Ouroteca.
Now, when it is necessary to confirm the origin of a suspicious sample, it is enough to analyze it and compare the results with the Ouroteca data to know, with a high degree of reliability, where the gold comes from.
On April 1st, Repórter Brasil and NBC showed how two alleged American gold smugglers and one Brazilian had their cargo of 35 kg of gold – worth nearly US$2.3 million (R$115 million) – seized by the authorities at Manaus airport, after agents inspected it and compared it with a database, confirming its illicit origins.
In the future, according to Moraes, the idea is to contribute to a system similar and as effective as the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, used to combat the sale of so-called blood diamonds, extracted in conflict regions.
“Consciousness has been created in many countries for jewelry and precious metals, people have a more sustainable mindset and want to know the origin of the products so as not to buy those that have an illicit origin, the so-called blood gold,” said Moraes.
Not all gold is equal
It is often not easy to determine exactly where the seized gold came from, making it even more difficult for the police to say with certainty whether its origin is illicit. But there are ways to overcome this.
“Gold is a metallic alloy. The main constituent is gold, there is no 24 karat gold. There are always impurities and it is in these impurities that you find silver, copper, lead and other elements in small quantities”, said Moraes. These impurities, some of which leave traces even after refining, allow experts to identify their origin.
Normally, the first method used by the Federal Police to determine the nature of these impurities is X-ray fluorescence. One of its strong points is that it does not need to be done in a laboratory, as a scan using a portable device provides information on the atomic structure of the ore in seconds.
These results indicate the location from which the sample was taken and can be compared with documentation provided by the owner to confirm that the gold comes from the stated location.
When the police need a more detailed analysis, the team can send the sample to a lab, where sophisticated machines do what's known as stable isotope detection. In this analysis, the researchers are able to observe the atomic structure of the impurities found in gold. Some atoms of these impurities, such as lead and silver, exist in nature in different stable forms.
Silver ones, for example, can have 60 or 62 neutrons in their structure. These different stable forms, or isotopes, can coexist in the same location, but their relative proportions are often specific to a particular region. Each ratio is called an isotopic signature or fingerprint, and experts can trace the place of origin by analyzing the signature of the impurities.
Rapid expansion
Illegal mining in Brazil expanded rapidly during the government of Jair Bolsonaro, from 2019 to 2022. In the Yanomami Indigenous Land, where it generated a humanitarian crisis , 1,782 hectares of land were destroyed in 2022 alone, an increase of 54% compared to the year previous.
According to the research collective MapBiomas, more than 200,000 hectares of land in the country are dedicated to mining, a sixfold increase since 1985, with around 90% of mining concentrated in the Amazon region.
Between 2015 and 2020, half of the gold sold by Brazil, the equivalent of 229 tons, showed signs of illegality, according to a study by the NGO Instituto Escolhas. The same organization estimates that, since 2010, illegal mining has quintupled in indigenous lands and tripled in protected areas.
In addition to the Ouroteca database, the Federal Police began an operation to arrest members of a group involved in the purchase and sale of illegal gold extracted from Yanomami land. Among the suspects arrested in the operation are businessmen, lawyers, a government official and an airline employee, all allegedly involved in a network that handled a cash flow of more than 422 million reais in five years.
Since the crackdown began, images of illegal miners fleeing have proliferated in the media, with reports suggesting that many simply crossed the borders into Guyana, French Guiana or other Amazonian states in Brazil such as Pará or even further into the Amazon. .
There are already signs of this, such as the destruction of a mining raft in the Middle Juruá region, in Amazonas, in November last year .
Much of the garimpeiros' ability to quickly recover from police repression and start operating again elsewhere is due to the fact that many of the criminal structures that support the industry are well established.
“Organized crime in general, especially those involved in drug trafficking, is migrating to gold,” said Moraes. “Because, in theory, dealing with gold is safer than dealing with drugs.”
And because the product can easily be melted down and passed along the production chain, there is virtually no distinction between illegal and legal gold, he said.
Those involved in the gold and drug trade also share logistics, allowing them to participate in both sectors, Moraes said. “You need planes, for example. Many pilots arrested for transporting gold have criminal records for drug trafficking”.
tracking transactions
Current legislation regulating artisanal mining has not been able to keep up with the growth of these sophisticated criminal networks, experts say.
While the Ouro Target program can be a valuable tool for dealing with suspected cases, experts say the gold market needs more control and accountability, particularly in the case of small garimpos, where most illegal activity takes place.
Brazilian authorities are taking action against the illegal gold trade . A Federal Revenue order to regulate the sale of gold, implemented at the end of March , aims to replace the system of handwritten receipts with electronic invoices, a suggestion supported by IBRAM , the association representing large mining companies. As of July, all gold sales will have to be made via electronic invoice .
Before the implementation of the measure, Gustavo Geiser, a Federal Police expert and member of the Ouro Alvo program, spoke to Mongabay, via video call, about the weaknesses of the system based on paper documents.
“When you buy a coffee you receive an invoice, and this is registered”, he said. “Not with gold. Sales at the mine are only recorded in a physical spreadsheet written in pen. There is no obligation for sellers to issue an invoice.”
On April 4, Federal Supreme Court (STF) Minister Gilmar Mendes suspended the article guaranteeing the “presumption of good faith” in legal gold sales, introduced in 2013, which critics say allowed sellers to mask the origins dark metal . The decision was confirmed by the majority of the ministers of the STF.
Rodrigo Bellezoni, specialist in public policies at the Center for Territorial Intelligence (CIT) at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), highlighted the importance of the Ouro Alvo program and the creation of a national database on gold.
“The first step is that the State needs to generate management data in an exemplary way, and these data have to be available to [governmental] bodies,” he said.
“The second is to cross this data with satellite images so that you can monitor changes in land use in the territory of interest.”
However, Bellezoni said that the success of a project like Ouro Alvo depends on political will. “Technology and knowledge are not a problem for Brazil,” he said. “The limiting factor is the political part.”
The database should be shared across agencies to help policymakers make decisions, he said. It is also essential to merge the gold library with other databases. "We need to integrate official databases with tax data and financial transactions in the future to close the siege to illegal operations," said Bellezoni.
Larissa Rodrigues, from Instituto Escolhas, defended the implementation of a traceability system that increases market transparency.
The first step in this system would require all the gold to be physically marked by adding a mixture of chemical elements that would act as a signature. The samples would then be grouped into batches which, in turn, could be tracked through the production chain.
“The marking does not change the value of the gold on the market, it remains very pure gold,” said Rodrigues.
Once the gold is marked, all subsequent transactions can be digitally tracked and recorded on a blockchain, a distributed database whose records cannot be altered. In this way, the system would have greater transparency and avoid deforestation and human rights violations.
“Here in Brazil, the legislation has always considered mining as a small and rudimentary activity, carried out by a few individuals. But this is not the reality we see today”, said Rodrigues.
“That is why Brazilian legislation needs to be changed to adapt to this new reality in which prospecting is a highly industrialized mining activity that occupies a huge area in the country.”
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