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Gold worth billions smuggled out of Africa
- caprese 8y agocommissions are commissions
- robotomir 8y agoI am sorry but how does that even pretend to be news?
- tim333 8y agoGold is quite a hard thing for governments to control. You can make it part of the structure of anything crossing a border.
- umvi 8y agoOr just eat a ton of kaju burfi covered in gold foil and then refine it out of your feces later
- Scoundreller 8y agoI get the feeling that a lot of rough diamonds may be smuggled out this very way.
- OJFord 8y ago> eat a ton [sic] of [...] ... anything, and see you in hospital, surely?
- nope-its-inert 8y agoAre you teying to make a lame joke about a ton being 2,000 pounds, versus the typical human digestive tract? Because that's just completely unfunny.
- RandomBacon 8y agoOnly if you overeat, or try to consume too large of a gold nugget that it creates an obstruction. Pure gold is very soft and won't chemically react with the body.
- saagarjha 8y agoAren’t kaju burfis normally covered in silver? I’m sure a gold one would stand out (plus, I’m sure the sweet probably costs more than the gold you’d be putting on it, and you can’t recover that).
- sumedh 8y ago> Aren’t kaju burfis normally covered in silver? Well in India it might be some other metal like Aluminium.
- m-i-l 8y agoI'd hope not - high doses of aluminium can cause considerable irreversible damage to the brain, see e.g. the Camelford poisoning[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelford_water_pollution_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelford_water_pollution_inci...
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoI recall a story about someone trying to move a fair amount of money. They had a bunch of tools such as a well-equipped motorist would carry (wrench sets, screwdrivers and such) forged out of platinum. They smeared a bit of grease on them here and there to give them that used look, and then just drove across the border with them.
- blacksmith_tb 8y agoOnce upon a time, platinum was worth more than gold, but in the last decade, they've reversed[1]. I suspect it would take more work conceal solid gold wrenches... 1: https://www.macrotrends.net/2541/platinum-prices-vs-gold-prices https://www.macrotrends.net/2541/platinum-prices-vs-gold-pri...
- JorgeGT 8y agoExactly, like the fake armor plating of your car. After you cross the border you can safely recast the white gold into aircraft seats and fly them to India.
- sp332 8y agoHow a couple of Nobel medals were smuggled: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/10/03/140815154/dissolve-my-nobel-prize-fast-a-true-story https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/10/03/140815154/d...
- coralreef 8y agoI'm no metallurgist, but that seems like an insanely expensive and time consuming way of smuggling gold, as compared to say a hidden compartment.
- davidw 8y ago"It turns out he really was a Nigerian prince who just needed a few hundred bucks to help move the money out of the country!"
- smadge 8y agoPart of the centuries old ongoing theft of the wealth of Africa.
- toasterlovin 8y agoYou realize that Africans are on one side of these transactions, right?
- smadge 8y agoYes.
- danans 8y agoBut that doesn't disprove the parent comment at all. Economic exploitation of regions always has local parties that assist in the process. It's not like those parties represent the interests or desires of most Africans in their actions.
- pm90 8y agoHow else would you have it though? We can’t force democracy on these nations. Apparently they can’t create functioning legal institutions. There just doesn’t seem to be a way to accurately represent the will of the people without also being actively involved in the geopolitics of the region.
- adamsea 8y agoWhich nations, specifically?
- danans 8y agoI never claimed to have a solution to that problem. I was just pointing out the flaw in the idea that just because some native Africans participated in the foreign colonial exploitation of Africa, it somehow lessens the degree of culpability for the exploitation itself.
- 8y ago
- logicx24 8y agoThis is a problem of poor infrastructure and corruption. Many of these resource-rich countries are politically unstable and lack the infrastructure to attract legitimate foreign investment. The regulatory framework is also broken, making it nearly impossible for new entrants to legally participate in the industry. A dysfunctional legal market leads black markets to flourish, as miners need some way to sell their goods, and traders want to profit exporting the gold to foreign countries. This leads to extralegal organizations, like criminal syndicates and mafias, forming to protect illegal producers and connect them to external markets. And so, to fix this, African countries need to not only crack down on illegal exports but also make it easier for legal entities to enter the industry. The government needs to provide a safe business environment for legal producers. That will cause illegal producers to naturally decline, as efficient legal production will lower costs. Of course, this is easier said than done. Structural reform of corrupt kleptocracies is incredibly difficult. But without top-down reform, restricting illegal exports will accomplish very little beyond worsening poverty.
- minikites 8y ago>This is a problem of poor infrastructure and corruption. Many of these resource-rich countries are politically unstable and lack the infrastructure to attract legitimate foreign investment. The regulatory framework is also broken, making it nearly impossible for new entrants to legally participate in the industry. I often see this sentiment about African nations but I almost never see thought beyond this into the root causes. If the speaker is being charitable to the subject, it's simply accepted as the way things are. If they aren't, it veers into a justification of Western superiority or African inferiority (two sides of the same coin).
- Retric 8y agoHere is a simplified overview. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs Basically, if the foundations for a nations weath is agriculture or industry it needs widespread infrastructure. However, for centralized resources like oil, very little infrastructure is required and improving the national standard of living is both expensive and dangerous for the ruling party. PS: South America faces many of the same issues with corruption and political instability.
- speeq 8y agoLet's hope it's not uranium-ore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkolobwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkolobwe
- lowdose 8y ago> UAE imported $15.1 billion worth of gold from Africa in 2016, more than any other country and up from $1.3 billion in 2006. The total weight was 446 tonnes, in varying degrees of purity – up from 67 tonnes in 2006. Sounds like UAE is increasingly hedging the dollar with gold.
- kenneth 8y agoThat's not my interpretation at all. EDIT: moved explanation it to a top level comment because I thought it more broadly interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19743663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19743663
- kenneth 8y agoMy interpretation of this article: The UAE is laundering dirty gold, cleaning it, and reselling it to China and India. Western buyers tend to stay away from UAE gold because Emirati refineries aren't accredited, but the Chinese and Indian don't care as much. This is good business for the UAE as they become the hub for gold laundering, and can make a hefty profit getting gold at a discount and reselling it at spot prices. This is really at the expense of Switzerland, which is currently the world center for gold refining. They import raw materials, refine and purify it, and export the finished products to industry, jewelers, and investors. If you've ever bought a gold bullion bar (whether 1oz or 1kg), you'll usually notice it's in an assay and branded either "Valcambi" or "PAMP," both of which are large Swiss gold refiners.
- lowdose 8y agoDo you have any export numbers of UAE to China? I only read imports quantified next to the fact China is still number one importer of African Gold. Edit: Since 2016 UAE is on the first place but the article mentions Chinese ventures being slapped on the wrist for bad business practices. Could it be China underreported their gold imports.?
- newhotelowner 8y ago> Western buyers tend to stay away from UAE gold Do Western buyers even buy gold like indians do? Most of Indian buys 22k jewelry. In India, no one knows about accridated. Indians love UAE gold. Lot of indians from USA fly through Emirates just to buy gold from UAE. Indians thinks that UAE gold is more pure than what they can get in USA or India.
- anovikov 8y agoGold is important for Indians because there is little other ways of saving money there... gold demand in India is huge.
- sidm83 8y agoThis was the case earlier but not so for a while. Current use of gold is mainly for jewellery, especially in weddings. This is a typical bride in South India - https://www.bookeventz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/xcover-3.jpg.pagespeed.ic.qgVHu7bzsP.jpg https://www.bookeventz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/x... Since about 2-3 decades, apart from use in jewellery, gold has been at best an 'alternative asset class' here. Unless of course one needs to hide cash income from the tax man.
- afarah 8y ago>large amounts of gold are leaving Africa with no taxes being paid to the states that produce them. The state does not produce the gold. Whatever the state produces it produces in the same way a leech produces the blood.
- dredmorbius 8y agoNeither did the miners. Nor who controls the miners or commodity flow. Minerals are literally wealth of the earth.
- seymourbuttes 8y agoThe comments here are extremely low quality
- dang 8y agoHigh-quality ones take longer to show up. They're harder to write.
- walrus01 8y agoMy interpretation: Gold jewelry is used as a store of value by many traditional communities in the middle east and also in Pakistan and in India. Go visit Rawalpindi and go to the "old downtown" area and look at how many jewelry stores there are. Literally hundreds. People don't trust banks, don't trust investment products which exist as intangible things in a computer record somewhere. People trust big ridiculous jewelry you can wear during your wedding. The jewelry dealers in Pakistan who buy gold from the UAE most likely don't care about its origin, whether it's ethically sourced gold, etc. They care about its purity and cost. I've been to these places and seen the hand fabrication of the jewelry in person. It's a pretty big part of the economy in Pakistan.
- closeparen 8y agoIn the US, buying jewelry and selling it back is a substantial guaranteed loss. Are the economics of the retail jewelry trade different there, or are the alternatives just so bad that it’s still compelling?
- pm90 8y agoThe latter. The biggest advantage of the West has been in the creation of Institutions that create and moderate financial instruments that are not deadweight like commodities. The Stock Market, index funds etc. are all considered “valid” places to put your financial resources in. These instruments invest in real companies and organizations instead of lying around in a bank. Unless other countries figure out how to do finance better they won’t be able to create the same dynamism that Western capital markets have.
- mongeese 8y agoI don't agree, at least in the case of India, there have been other places to put your money for a long time. However all of those require funds that have known sources and on which taxes have been paid. There is a huge amount of funds in India in the "parallel economy" which can not be invested in these funds, the only options are to hold as cash or invest in real property (land/gold). Historically gold has been a good investment in India. See https://www.apnaplan.com/gold-price-in-india-40-years-history/ https://www.apnaplan.com/gold-price-in-india-40-years-histor...
- zakum1 8y agoWhat Africa needs are institutions and infrastructure that can buy and refine gold and thereby ensure that the benefits of our resources accrue to the countries (and their people) from where they originate. The pirate miners are not necessarily the source of the problem, neither are the traders in UAE and China. All are just filling a vacuum. Similarly the traditional institutions in Switzerland and other western countries that control precious metal markets are also somewhat part of the problem. To the extent that political elites in Africa benefit from the exploitation of resources, establishing local institutions and infrastructure is narrowly seen as not in their interests. African people and global institutions who truly care about a peaceful, prosperous and free world need to commit investment and political focus to see this happen.
- danieltillett 8y agoThey do have - they are called western mining companies. I invest in many of them and they are doing great things for these very poor countries. It is a pity more people don't invest in these companies as they tend to be priced at a significant discount to mining companies working in western countries. This is especially acute at the exploration/development stage which makes it hard for them to raise the money to develop new mines.
- indigo945 8y agoWhat exactly are some of the great things Western mining companies are doing for poor countries? The only thing that I'm aware of which might be construed as positive is that through exfiltrating resources from the country and channeling the profits of this venture into the pockets of Western shareholders, they lift the country of its resource curse, by lifting it of its resources. However, this is neither ethically nor, in the short and medium term, practically, actually a good thing. And besides that, there just isn't much: mining ventures do not require much infrastructure, which will therefore not see much improvement from those investments, and the wages paid to local workers are laughable compared to the revenue mining generates, to the point where getting that revenue into the pockets of local warlord kleptocrats might actually be better, because if nothing else, at least their lavish lifestyle drives demand and powers the local economy. Or is there a different force at play that I'm not seeing?
- duxup 8y agoI think black market mining has been an ongoing issue for a long time in Africa hasn't it?
- pcurve 8y agoProbably not very hard to smuggle gold. 1 billion dollar worth of gold is 4ft cube. That’s it.
- easymovet 8y agoBut that weighs almost twenty thousand lbs
- big-boats 8y agoSo it's probably on a boat right now.
- Dylan16807 8y agoSo ten tons, split that across the backseats of several cars and go. Or for subtlety a single backpack can easily fit a million or two at a liftable weight.
- pcurve 8y agoIt's actually closer to 25 metric tons.. so 50,000 lbs. :)
- easymovet 8y agoBitcoin
- ragerino 8y agoI found an article that explains what happened to Lybia's gold reserves that disapeared when Lybia was liberated by France and USA. https://www.libyaobserver.ly/economy/55-tons-libyan-gold-smuggled-uae https://www.libyaobserver.ly/economy/55-tons-libyan-gold-smu...
- ragerino 8y agoHere's another article: https://awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/2016/01/10/who-stole-143-tons-of-gold-from-the-libyan-people/ https://awfulavalanche.wordpress.com/2016/01/10/who-stole-14...
- swarnie_ 8y ago"liberated" might be the most revisionist word possible. The place is now a 3rd world country.
- pattle 8y agoI've always wanted to own a gold bar, holding something that's both valuable and visually pleasant to look at would be quite satisfying I presume.
- epanchin 8y agoOn the off chance you’re in London, you can hold one in the Bank of England museum. Not quite the same as holding your own gold bar, but £400k cheaper.
- sangnoir 8y agoWhile not as shiny and minimalist - you could buy Krugerrands from the South African mint[1]. They are essentially gold coins and some of the designs are aesthetically pleasing - they have yearly redesigns as well as special commemoration editions in different weights/size (and cost). 1. http://www.samint.co.za/ http://www.samint.co.za/