How 'blood gold' from Africa is funding Russia's war on Ukraine
: [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In a previous audio version of this story, we incorrectly said the Blood Gold Report was produced in conjunction with Democracy 21. It was produced in conjunction with 21Democracy, a different organization.]
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
A new report details how the Wagner mercenary group uses gold mining in Africa to funnel money to the Kremlin. According to The Blood Gold Report, Wagner has laundered some $2.5 billion to Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year in an effort to support the war effort. And this is all in spite of global sanctions that have shut off the Russian economy for much of the world - or tried to at least. Jessica Berlin is a co-author of the report. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
JESSICA BERLIN: Hi, Scott. Thanks for having me.
DETROW: When you use the phrase blood gold, tell us what you mean by that.
BERLIN: The term blood gold is coined to describe the gold that's being mined and laundered into international markets to finance the Russian state and, in turn, enable the Russian state to wage its war of aggression on Ukraine as well as to commit atrocities against people in Syria and across the African continent.
DETROW: So the report focuses on three countries - Sudan, Mali and the Central African Republic. Wagner has a presence in a number of countries. Why were these three so important for what you were trying to look at here?
BERLIN: Well, these countries are where Russia's blood gold trade has really taken off. They're the primary targets for Russia's operations in the gold industry, and also they demonstrate very clearly the model of how Wagner operates on the continent and is able to exert increasing economic and political influence there.
DETROW: Tell us about that model. I know it probably differs a little bit from country to country, but there's a typical playbook that we're seeing here. Tell us how it works.
BERLIN: For example, in the Central African Republic, Wagner has already been collaborating and operating with the regime there since 2017. They were given basically exclusive mining rights for the country's largest gold mine in return for propping up the regime there. They're basically what can be considered as a private security company, giving the regime both physical and political protection. They're targeting opposition groups, unleashing a lot of the kind of disinformation and hybrid warfare tactics against opponents and critics of the regime, and this model of going after critics and opposition in defense of the regime, the paying client, then following this up with disinformation, with broad and sophisticated media strategies to spread confusion and fake news and slander against opponents, and then lastly, of course, the deployment of Wagner mercenaries against the communities and the opponents of the regime who are standing in their way.
DETROW: And, of course, there's been two years of international sanctions on Russia right now. Are current sanctions allegedly trying to address this income stream? What is the state of things right now? What are you seeing? What's working? What's not?
BERLIN: In order to reduce Wagner's ability to profit off of gold on the continent, we need to heavily increase the sanctions and how we target the actors involved in the blood gold trade. This means not just going after Wagner on the supply side but going after the regimes who are contracting them on the demand side. We also need to much more strongly control the supply chains and inflict sanctions on the intermediaries in, for example, Dubai, Hong Kong, the Philippines, who are engaged in the gold laundering, if you will, and make it more difficult and expensive for middlemen to have anything to do with Wagner and with Russian gold.
DETROW: That's Jessica Berlin. She co-authored a new report analyzing how the Wagner Group is funding Russia's war effort with billions of dollars in African gold. Thank you so much.
BERLIN: Thank you.
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