Court rules accountancy firm breached code of ethics in its dealings with a refiner
A former partner at the accounting firm EY has been awarded $10.8m (£8.6m) in damages after being forced out of his job when he exposed professional misconduct during an audit of a Dubai gold refiner.
The high court in London ruled on Friday that EY had repeatedly breached the code of ethics for professional accountants in its dealings with one of its clients, Kaloti Jewellery International.
Continue reading...Papua New Guinea out of pocket $157m from failed attempt at mining material from deep-sea vents as opponents point to environmental risk
The “total failure” of PNG’s controversial deep sea mining project Solwara 1 has spurred calls for a Pacific-wide moratorium on seabed mining for a decade.
The company behind Solwara 1, Nautilus, has gone into administration, with major creditors seeking a restructure to recoup hundreds of millions sunk into the controversial project.
Continue reading...Apple says it is ‘deeply committed to responsible sourcing of materials’
Electronics companies, including Canon, Apple and Nokia, are re-evaluating their supply chains following reports they may be using gold extracted from a Tanzanian mine that has been criticised for environmental failures.
Over the past 10 years, at the North Mara goldmine – which is operated by London-listed Acacia Mining – there have been more than a dozen killings of intruding locals by security personnel.
Continue reading...Police and guards at North Mara have been accused of killing dozens – possibly hundreds – of locals
When safari tourists drive to the Serengeti national park in Tanzania, few realise they are passing one of the world’s most contentious goldmines.
From the escarpment above the plain, the North Mara facility is so large that it at first resembles a bare hillside. But look closer and the artificial mound is made up of tiers of reddish brown earth, from which a thin grey plume of smoke drifts up to the sky.
Continue reading...Their methods and origins differ, but their hunger for gold drives violence – and any foreign incursion could trigger escalation
Late 2016, Nicolás Maduro tweeted a photograph of himself with a smile on his face and a gleaming ingot in his hands – but not all that glitters is gold.
Venezuela claims to possess some of the largest untapped gold and coltan reserves in the world, and the country’s gold rush picked up when the president decreed the creation of a massive area of 112,000 sq km destined for mining, known as the Orinoco mining arc. In a recently published development plan Venezuela set the goal to produce more than 80,ooo kilos of gold a year by 2025.
Continue reading...Puerto Ordaz has been swept up in a gold rush that powers the city as the armed groups running the mines flourish
Puerto Ordaz was once Venezuela’s industrial hub, a modernist dream of broad boulevards and ranks of factories and gateway to a belt of rich oilfields that funded government largesse for decades.
As the economy has crumbled though, the modern city of steel and aluminium has been swallowed by its past, transformed into little more than an outpost of the gold mines a few hours’ drive away in the fringes of the Amazon.
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