That amounts to 1.5 metric tons of the precious metal in 2023, sourced from wildcat mines known as garimpos, which have a long history of illegality and opaqueness.

  • A new study concludes that nearly all of the gold imported into the European Union from Brazil comes from Amazonian areas with a high risk of illegality.

  • That amounts to 1.5 metric tons of the precious metal in 2023, sourced from wildcat mines known as garimpos, which have a long history of illegality and opaqueness.

  • The Brazilian government implemented a series of measures in 2023 to increase oversight of the gold trade, but experts say much of the trade continued underground.

The European Union is leading global efforts to curb the imports of deforestation-linked products, issuing a regulation in 2023 banning the import of such goods across a range of commodities, including beef, timber and soy. But there appears to be one glaring omission: gold, and in particular gold from Brazil, nearly all of which is likely tainted with illegality.