Prosecutor-General: Gold sellers’ proof of origin too flimsy

Brazil’s Office of the Prosecutor-General this week submitted to the Supreme Court a request to suspend a section of the law authorizing the origin of gold sold in the country to be certified by the seller.

Filed by the Green Party in January this year, the motion challenges the presumption of legality benefiting sellers, which is believed to encourage the trade of gold extracted illegally from indigenous lands in the Amazon.

In the view of Prosecutor-General Augusto Aras, transactions should be monitored by the entities authorized by the Central Bank to distribute bonds and securities.

“These are the only institutions that have contact with the sellers. They are the buyers who can take action and investigate possible irregularities,” he declared. “They are the ones exclusively responsible for letting extracted gold into the financial market formally,” he added.