US Urged to Tackle Illicit Gold Boom Fueled by Soaring Price
Gold nuggets in a sorting tray at a refining plant.
Photographer: BloombergUS authorities are being pressed to step up efforts to combat the illegal gold trade, one of the largest and fastest-growing illicit economies in the Western Hemisphere as bullion prices surge.
An illegal gold mining and trafficking boom in several South American nations has become a crisis too large for the US to ignore, according to a report from the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, or FACT, released Wednesday. In Colombia and Peru, top growers of the plants used to make cocaine, illegal gold is estimated to generate more money for organized crime than the drug trade itself.