U.S. Mint Buys Drug Cartel Gold and Sells It as 'American'

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.This gold comes from a Colombian drug cartel mine. It should never end up at the U.S. Mint.But it does.The mine poisons the workers. The gold underwrites terrorism and cocaine trafficking.But how do you stop illegal gold at $5,000 an ounce, when even the U.S. government is buying?Supported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTTimes InvestigationU.S. Mint Buys Drug Cartel Gold and Sells It as ‘American’Every year, the United States Mint sells more than $1 billion of investment-grade gold coins. Each is stamped with an icon like the bald eagle, signifying the government’s guarantee, required by law, that the gold is 100 percent American.“To hold a coin or medal produced by the Mint is to connect to the founding principles of our nation,” the Mint declares.But a New York Times investigation has found that the government’s program of gold sales is based on a lie. The Mint is actually the last link in a chain that launders foreign gold, much of it illegally mined, for an insatiable market.The Mint buys gold that originates in a Colombian drug cartel mine. It makes Lady Liberty coins out of gold from Mexican and Peruvian pawn shops and from a Congolese mine that is part-owned by the Chinese government, records show. Some Mint gold has come from a company in Honduras that dug up an Indigenous graveyard for the ore underneath.VideoFederal law requires coins like this American Gold Eagle to be minted from only newly mined American gold.CreditCredit...By Lauren Pruitt and Rebecca SunerImageGold miners have cleared the forests and grasslands along the Nechí River in Colombia. The brightly colored pools that pockmark the area contain mining pollution.Congress in 1985 prohibited the Mint from making bullion out of foreign gold because it wanted to insulate the process from human rights abuses, primarily in apartheid South Africa. The Mint has flouted that law, across Democratic and Republican administrations, despite internal warnings.Now, even President Trump’s 24-karat gold coin, commemorating the United States’ 250th birthday, could come from a swirl of non-American gold from any number of sources.The Mint, the biggest name in the global market for investment gold coins, is an example of how the industry’s guardrails have collapsed. Gold prices hover around $5,000 an ounce, about four times the price of a decade ago. That gives criminal organizations and fly-by-night operators a huge incentive to mine in wasteful, destructive and risky ways. window.registerInteractive && window.registerInteractive("100000010862794"); #g-MINT-GOLDmap-box, #g-MINT-GOLDmap-box .g-artboard { margin:0 auto; } #g-MINT-GOLDmap-box .g-aiAltText { position:absolute; left:-10000px; width:1px; height:1px; overflow:hidden; white-space:nowrap; } #g-MINT-GOLDmap-box p { margin:0; } #g-MINT-GOLDmap-box .g-aiAbs { position:absolute; } #g-MINT-GOLDmap-box .g-aiImg { position:absolute; top:0; display:block; width:100% !important; } #g-MINT-GOLDmap-box .g-aiSymbol { position:absolute; box-sizing:border-box; } #g-MINT-GOLDmap-box .g-aiPointText p { white-space:nowrap; } #g-MINT-GOLDmap-335 { position:relative; overflow:hidden; } #g-MINT-GOLDmap-335 p { font-family:nyt-franklin,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight:regular; line-height:14px; height:auto; opacity:1; mix-blend-mode:normal; letter-spacing:0em; font-size:14px; text-align:left;…

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