World Gold Council working to lure artisanal | Australian Markets

The World Gold Council estimates up to 20 per cent of the world’s provide of the valuable steel is produced by “artisanal” miners whose actions are weak to exploitation from “illicit actors” corresponding to terrorists and mercenary organisations just like the infamous Wagner Group.

During his go to to Kalgoorlie-Boulder this week, the council’s chief strategy officer Terry Heymann mentioned the London-headquartered organisation needed to deliver these small-scale miners into the formal gold provide chain and make them much less seemingly to work with “informal and illicit markets”.

Artisanal and small-scale mining entails people normally working by themselves and primarily by hand or with some mechanical or industrial instruments.

“This is very different from the large-scale professional mines . . . (it’s) not really happening in Australia, it’s much more of an issue in other parts of the world, but it’s an issue that we care about deeply and we’re doing a lot of work in how to support responsible artisanal and small-scale gold mining,” Mr Heymann mentioned.

“A number of my colleagues this week are in Ghana, where the Ashanti King is actually convening a conference to address this issue, which is how do we support access to the formal markets for small-scale and artisanal gold mining?

“Why is that important?

“Because if they don’t have access to the formal markets, they go to the informal and illicit markets.

“And that’s a real challenge for the gold industry, one that we’re actively involved in and doing a lot of work on.”

Mr Heymann mentioned a report it held in partnership with former British deputy prime minister Dominic Raab highlighted the damaging nature of these “illicit actors”.

“(Mr Raab’s) findings, unfortunately, are really stark . . . without access to the formal market, these illicit, informal and sometimes illegal miners are forced to work with illicit actors, and that then gets into supplying gold funding for terrorist groups, mercenaries, with the Wagner Group as an example.”

The Wagner Group is a Russian-based non-public navy company which has been concerned in conflicts throughout the globe, together with the present warfare in Ukraine.

Notoriously, in June 2023 the group’s then-leader Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an “armed mutiny” in opposition to the Russian navy — nevertheless it ended earlier than the Wagner Group’s deliberate march on Moscow.

Mr Prigozhin died in a airplane crash in Russia in August 2023.

Mr Heymann mentioned the problem was extraordinarily important for the entire gold sector.

“It’s a different part of the gold sector to where most of the people investing in gold are going to be getting their gold from,” he mentioned.

“(And) it’s not something the industry can do by itself, and this is why we are calling on governments around the world, particularly those involved in the G20, who can really group together and make a difference on this to take action, to be part of this coalition of the willing to actually drive change.

“My boss, the CEO of the World Gold Council, was meeting with the secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development last week, who is Australian — Mattias Cormann — and he pledged OECD support to us.

“The OECD has been hugely involved in this, and I think it’s that level of support we need — of the OECD, of national governments in Australia, in the US and Canada, big mining nations using their ability and their leverage to bring together different groups of people who can really address this issue.”