Brazilian police expand the program to detect gold from illegal Amazon Mines, Nab Smugglers

* Brazil is expanding gold tracking to combat borderloning smuggling * Interpol’s Gaia project, supports global acceptance of the Brazil’s tracking method * Amazon Police Cooperation Center AIDS in the approach of environmental crimes by Ricardo Brito and Luis Jaime Acosta Brazil’s Federal could, be it from an illegal mine in the Amazon rain, investigators told Reuters that they are expanding the program to other countries, hoping to catch more criminals trying to escape Brazil’s tightened enforcement by smuggling gold across the borders. Gold prices rose this month to achieve highlights, as political uncertainty around the world forced investors to seek safe havens. Rising prices are a powerful incentive for those who illegally exploit the precious metal in the Amazon rainforest. The Brazilian program catalog ‘Gold DNA’, the unique morphological signature of the metal, to join each piece of golden police of suspects to environmental damage caused by illegal mining in specific parts of the rainforest. In 2023, Brazil continued its first case with the help of the technique. But as criminal groups expand their reach and take gold from illegal mines in one country to Smelters in another, police say they have to grow their gold library to keep up. “If we have samples of all gold-producing areas across the Pan-Amazon region, our gold database will be completed, scientifically identifying the origin of the samples grabbed,” said Humberto Freire, head of the Amazon and the Environment Department at the Federal Police in Brazil. Amazon Gold database is growing beyond Brazil. Some expansion work has already begun. A series of agreements signed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and France’s Emmanuel Macron allowed Brazil and French -Guyana police to access samples from each other’s databases to increase the collaboration between investigators. In August, Freire Pedro Sánchez, Minister of Defense of the Colombian defense, met to discuss the implementation of the program there. In Colombia, criminal groups that often have drug trafficking money through illegal mining operations. Officials in the entire region fear that the practice can expand to other countries, making investigations more difficult. In recent years, the Colombian authorities have increasingly found that Brazilians are working in illegal gold mines near the border, according to Colombia’s National Ministry of Police and Defense. Two officials from the Ministry of Defense Ministry told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the country is interested in working with Brazil and modeling its initiative to develop its own project to analyze Gold DNA. The work of Brazilian Federal Police in detection also urged Interpol to develop the Gaia project, backed by the German government, to train police agencies worldwide to use the Brazilian method to catalog gold. Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquaza, a Brazilian federal police officer, said he supported initiatives to map gold-producing regions as a strategy for successful investigations against illegal mining. Interruption forces golden smugglers to move tactics. The sharp increase in investigations and attacks on illegal gold miners under the Lula administration forced criminal groups to turn to international routes and export gold to neighboring countries for processing and selling, one source at Brazil’s federal police told Reuters. A series of state -led enforcement measures, including a decision of the Supreme Court that forced Smelters to verify the origin of gold, also made it more difficult for the illegal mined gold to enter the market. “We used to see gold coming from Venezuela to Brazil-now it is the opposite, gold leaves Brazil,” says Erich Moreira Lima, head of Brazil’s gold tracking program. Investigators say this shift is already visible in data. Last year there was a sharp decline in gold trade, with the federal police seizures falling to 80 kg in 2023 from a record of 308 kg. But between January and August this year, police have already seized 253 kg of gold – half of which was on his way to Smelters in Venezuela, according to investigators. Now federal police officers are working to analyze the “DNA” of the Gate Gold to find out where it came from. As environmental criminals are increasingly working across borders, governments in the region work to create other instruments for collaboration. This month, Lula joined Colombian President Gustavo Petro and other authorities to introduce the Amazon International Police Cooperation Center in Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon. The center, which was first announced in 2023, is designed to facilitate information distribution in the Amazon countries, focusing on environmental offenses. (Reporting by Ricardo Brito in Brazilia and Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota, writes by Manuela Andreoni and David Gregorio)