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Each year, the United States Mint sells more than $1 billion of investment-grade gold coins. Each is stamped with a bald eagle-like symbol, indicating the government’s guarantee, required by law, that the gold is 100 percent American.<\/p>\n
The Mint says, “To wear a coin or medal produced by the Mint is to connect with the founding principles of our nation.”<\/p>\n
But a New York Times investigation has found that the government’s gold sales program is based on lies. The Mint is actually the last link in a chain that launders foreign gold for an insatiable market, much of which is mined illegally.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Now, President Trump’s 24-karat gold coin commemorating the 250th birthday of the United States could also come from non-U.S. gold, from any source.<\/p>\n
The Mint, the biggest name in the global market for investment gold coins, is an example of how the industry’s guardrails have collapsed. Gold prices are around $5,000 an ounce, almost four times the price a decade ago. This creates huge incentives for criminal organizations and fly-by-night operators to mine in wasteful, destructive and risky ways.<\/p>\n
Investors buy gold to protect against volatility. Nearly every terrorist attack, war, and financial meltdown over the past quarter century has fueled a gold-buying frenzy.<\/p>\n
But as prices continue to rise, wealthy buyers are actually helping to create the very volatility they are trying to protect against.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The industry’s biggest players talk about the clear lines between legal and criminal gold. Purchasing from a reputable source like Mint is done to ensure that criminals, terrorists, and polluters do not benefit. In fact, the Mint has turned its attention for decades as gold from questionable sources arrives at its plant in West Point, NY.<\/p>\n
We tracked hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign gold that entered the Mint’s supply chain in recent years. This includes old gold, whose origin is difficult or impossible to determine, and gold from countries such as Colombia and Nicaragua, where the industry is linked to criminal groups.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
When we first contacted the Mint, a spokesperson said its gold came entirely from the United States, as required by law. After we shared our findings, the Mint said the US was its “primary” source and said it was taking steps to better track its gold.<\/p>\n
Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, whose department oversees the Mint, said he would investigate the gold purchasing practices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
“This review is focused on ensuring that the U.S. Mint’s gold suppliers comply with the law and strictly meet their obligations, and the Mint takes every possible step to vigorously safeguard our national security and maintain market integrity,” he said in a written statement.<\/p>\n
To turn illegally mined foreign gold into the American Eagle coin, alchemy has two obvious functions.<\/p>\n
First, illegal gold becomes legal.<\/p>\n
Second, it becomes American.<\/p>\n
To see this sleight of hand in action, we went to the heart of the Clan del Golfo region in northwestern Colombia. A six-hour drive from Medell\u00edn took us to the northern slopes of the Andes and the tropical lowlands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The miners call this field La Mandinga, the name of an evil spirit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
A pair of mining supervisors told us that for the past eight years, the Clan del Golfo has run La Mandinga with a short list of rules. Most important: no one mines without the cartel’s permission, and everyone gets paid.<\/p>\n
Each month, observers said, a man on a motorcycle collects $400, the clan cut, for each team of five people. There are hundreds of teams, maybe a thousand or more.<\/p>\n
They work in open-air mines, using excavators and high-pressure tubes to turn the hills of La Mandinga into mud. It is impossible to extract small pieces of gold from that mud, so miners mix the mud with mercury and stir it by hand until the mercury sticks to the gold.<\/p>\n
All of this is illegal, environmentally destructive and toxic.<\/p>\n
Colombian authorities sometimes carry out airstrikes and raids on mines supporting the clan. But the miners in La Mandinga apparently don’t have to worry, even though their operation is directly adjacent to a military base. They work so fearlessly that, when we flew a drone over the area in February, we saw that workers had breached the base perimeter and were mining gold on military land. (Connected: <\/em>See what happened after a cartel mine was found at a military base<\/em>.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At the end of the day, workers collect their brown balls of mercury and gold, each the size of a marble, and wrap them in plastic. They stuff these marbles in their pockets and ride their motorcycles through the dirt roads of La Mandinga into nearby Caucasia.<\/p>\n La Mandinga gold has no business entering the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the clan “a violent and powerful criminal organization” last year when the United States designated the cartel a terrorist group.<\/p>\n The Treasury Department places Clan del Golfo leaders on a financial blacklist, banning US companies from doing business with them. Government organizations and academics have documented the cartel’s gold mining activities here for years. (A Colombian lawyer for the cartel did not return calls for comment.)<\/p>\n Caucasia is a gold rush city. Businesses sell excavation equipment, pumps and million-dollar dredges for illegal river bed mining. Fancy cafes and dance clubs have opened. Miners can sell gold to any of hundreds of storefronts. Every month, two shop owners told us, Kabila collects $400 from them too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And thus, the first metamorphosis was completed. Gold is legal. Mercury, off-limits mining, payments to the clan \u2013 it’s all been wiped out.<\/p>\n How?<\/p>\n Mr. Cuevas showed us the ledger entries on the shop’s computer. His suppliers in La Mandinga, he said, have registered under the Colombian program for small-scale miners, or barrequeros. Almost anyone can obtain a license, as long as they mine in authorized areas using only hand tools and do not use mercury.<\/p>\n Of course, the workers at La Mandinga aren’t just mining with hand tools. Or in authorized areas. And they’re using mercury. Mr. Cuevas knows all this. He himself mines in La Mandinga. But it is not their job to look beyond the paperwork. And Colombian authorities rarely investigate the provenance of Berequero gold to determine validity.<\/p>\n Instead, they ask a question: Is there paperwork?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The shop where Mr. Cuevas works, like others in the city, sells to a government-owned exporter. The exporter said he checks the same database that Mr. Cuevas uses, verifying that the gold is legitimate. The gold from La Mandinga is mixed with supplies from around Colombia and melted into bars. Many of them, worth about $255 million last year, reached Texas, export records show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There gold becomes American.<\/p>\n At a refinery called Dillon Gauge outside Dallas, workers put imported gold into a glowing cauldron, and mixed it with molten gold from other suppliers: South American mines, secondhand American jewelry dealers and Peruvian pawn shops, according to records and interviews.<\/p>\n But for Dillon Gage’s clients, once the gold is out of the Dallas pan, it is no longer foreign. The Dillon gauge is in the United States and mixes American gold with Colombian gold. So, the industry argument is that the end product should be American. “As far as they’re concerned, it started in America,” said Terry Hanlon, chief executive officer of Dillon Gauge.<\/p>\n Mr Hanlon said his company was looking for illegal gold. But at this point, because of the store’s books and export paperwork, the Mandinga gold is legal. This means that Mr. Hanlon’s buying and selling is legal. (Mr. Hanlon said he was surprised we found cartel gold in his pipeline. The company suspended purchases from the Colombian exporter.)<\/p>\n Two mint suppliers are among Dillon Gauge’s biggest customers, Mr. Hanlon said. He said he gives his customers an annual list of its sources, so even if customers think of the gold as American, they know its true origins.<\/p>\n La Mandinga is one of several cartel-controlled mines in the region. Mr. Cuevas works at just one of hundreds of stores in one city. There are lots of exporters, and even more buyers. In this trillion-dollar market notorious for fraud and money laundering, the difference between dirty gold and clean gold exists mainly on paper. Unless a customer is willing to investigate, the distinctions are lost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n