"A SECRETIVE BELGIAN TYCOON IS A KEY INVESTOR IN A MAJOR NEW GOLD REFINERY IN BRAZIL’S AMAZON", 17 February 2022

...BRAZIL’S LARGEST GOLD refinery will soon be operational — right in the middle of the Amazon. The government of Pará, a northern state of Brazil that contains a vast portion of the Amazon, has trumpeted the refinery as a strategic move to bolster a local economy that has been decimated by deforestation and illegal mining. In their announcements surrounding the project, however, Brazilian authorities have concealed the identity of the key investor behind the North Star refinery: Belgian tycoon Sylvain Goetz, whose family’s empire of precious minerals has been ridden with scandal.

Goetz has a nearly 25 percent share in North Star, according to government documents obtained by The Intercept...

In 2020, Sylvain Goetz and his brother Alain were convicted in Belgium of money laundering and fraud for creating an underground black market for gold...

In a statement to The Intercept, Goetz’s lawyer, Bert Luyten, said that his client “made a personal investment” in the refinery, and that he is merely a stockholder and not conducting business on behalf of the enterprise. “He never visited the construction project and never met the governor, who is a complete stranger to him.” Luyten also said that Tony Goetz NV has been nearly nonoperational since 2020...

In the last two years, hundreds of U.S. companies reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that gold refined by Tony Goetz may have ended up in their products. The companies include Tesla, Amazon, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, HP, and Starbucks.

Asked about the allegations surrounding Tony Goetz, in light of their filings with the SEC, Amazon and Starbucks declined to comment, while Tesla, Johnson & Johnson, and HP did not respond. A Dell spokesperson said the company was working to transition its suppliers away from the Goetz family business...

Larissa Rodrigues, from Instituto Escolhas, a nonprofit organization that researches the gold supply chain in Brazil, said that a big gold refinery located within Pará will boost small-scale mining in the Amazon...

In Brazil, the most that authorities will reveal about the owners of the new refinery is that North Star is a “Brazilian company with Belgian capital, specialized in the field of precious minerals”...

When it comes to North Star, the government of Pará is again planning to work with companies with a controversial history.

Last February, the governor of Pará, Helder Barbalho, signed an agreement with five mining companies for them to supply gold to the North Star refinery. The companies are Serabi Mineração S/A, Brazauro Recursos Minerais S/A (which formerly sold its operation to the Canadian G Mining Ventures), BRI Mineração LTDA., Gana Gold Mineração S/A, and Belo Sun Mineração LTDA...

Illegal mining in Pará affects the health of Indigenous communities, with mercury contamination appearing in the rivers and fish of the Amazon...