"New Global Witness investigation reveals how one of the world’s leading gold refiners, Switzerland’s Valcambi, sources from UAE’s Kaloti, which is linked to Sudanese ‘conflict gold’", 16 July 2020

The world’s largest gold refiner, the Swiss company Valcambi, has sourced significant quantities of gold from notorious UAE-based refiner Kaloti, a new report from Global Witness reveals today.

Beneath the Shine: A Tale of Two Gold Refiners also shows how Kaloti probably purchased Sudanese gold linked to armed groups in Darfur in 2012 and was at high risk of doing so in subsequent years. Kaloti’s gold could even be ending up in the products of major household brands such as Amazon, Starbucks, Sony, Disney, and HP.

Between 2012 and 2019, Kaloti has repeatedly acquired large amounts of gold from the Central Bank of Sudan, which has bought gold from the Jebel Amer mines in Darfur, controlled by violent militias responsible for grave human rights abuses during the long-running civil conflict in the region...

Kaloti wrote to Global Witness that it has never sourced conflict gold or gold from Darfur and that it has conducted enhanced due diligence when sourcing from conflict and high-risk areas.

Valcambi wrote to Global Witness that it has developed its own sourcing standards which are aligned with and go beyond international standards and that it conducts enhanced due diligence on high-risk sources.