BRASILIA, Sept 10 (Askume) – Brazilian police launched a massive operation against illegal mining in the Amazon on Monday, raiding a criminal organisation that had financed the production and sale of 3.1 tonnes of gold whose origin was concealed by falsified documents.
Federal police said in a statement that most of the arrests and more than two dozen search and seizure warrants took place in southern Para state, which has seen a surge in illegal gold mining in rainforests in recent years, much of it in affected areas on protected tribal reserves.
“We found that at least 3.14 tonnes of illegally mined gold was refined through false claims of the origin of the ore,” the statement said.
Most of the gold is refined in São José do Rio Preto, a city in northern São Paulo state where the jewelry industry is booming and where illegal gold is melted into legal gold bullion, making the illegal metal difficult to trace.
“We have to determine if the gold is illegal and whether it came from unauthorized mining,” Alexandre Manoel Goncalves, the federal police officer who headed the operation, told Askume.
A federal judge ordered the seizure and freezing of 2.9 billion reais ($514 million) in cash and property, including vehicles, motorcycles, jewellery and gold nuggets, police said.
Four companies were suspended, six mining licences and four firearms licences were cancelled, and four local government officials were ordered removed from their posts, police said.
The statement said that tribal people have been found involved in criminal organisations.
