[Excerpt translation from Spanish to English provided by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre]

"Peru: organized crime uses mining formalization permits to 'launder' illegal gold" - February 24, 2020

The Prosecutor's Office and the Police carried out a mega operation in five regions of Peru and arrested 18 people accused of belonging to the criminal gold laundering network called Los Topos...Four of those investigated are registered in the mining formalization registry and their documents were used to move large quantities of the mineral...All this gold from the Parcoy tunnels was found in warehouses in the Port of Callao, ready to be exported to countries like Dubai, China and Switzerland through formal mining companies...One of [the companies] is Jingzhong Globe Mining Company SAC, whose general manager is Liu Yu Hang...The other company called Meta Segura SAC, belongs to Yan Ruzhong and its export activities have been registered since 2016. In both cases the destination of the minerals was China...The fiscal folder also includes processing and export companies that received the gold from Parcoy...The Veta Dorada mining company is one of them. In a statement sent to Mongabay Latam, the company said that it "buys the gold ore from small formal and artisanal miners duly registered with the Ministry of Energy and Mines" and added that it "will actively participate in the investigations of the Public Prosecutor's Office" ...The other companies included in the fiscal file are La Azulita SAC, Minera Titan del Peru SRL [part of Titan] and Minera Las Lomas Doradas SAC. Mongabay Latam sought the version of these companies and all of them stated that they would not make any statements on the subject ...