Gold worth US $1.9million has been seized in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in Congo. Lieutenant Jean de Dieu Musongela, head of the military prosecutor’s office in Mambasa confirmed the report and said the 31kg was seized from smugglers.
The gold came from Muchacha, which he described as a mine in the Okapi reserve. Mining in the reserve – a UNESCO World Heritage site, home to okapi, forest elephants, and other endangered species – is illegal, but the Congolese mining registry shows Okapi covering a smaller area than on UNESCO’s maps.
Lieutenant Musongela said that three Congolese men were arrested while two men who were Chinese, fled. The three suspects were taken to the provincial capital Bunia for further questioning.
Contravention of Congolese law
“Not only are these people mining gold, they are also melting it. However we don’t know the extent of the operation,” said Musongela.
The United Nations Group of Experts on the Congo in a report said Muchacha is on mining concession PE7657, owned by MCC Resources. The report said, citing photographic evidence that members of the Congolese armed forces were on the Muchacha site, in contravention of Congolese law.
According to Danny Munsense Muteba, head of investigations at the Ituri mines ministry, the mine is around 200km from the Ugandan border, through which most of the province’s gold is smuggled. The UN experts, who have reported Kampala is a trading hub for smuggled gold from Ituri, said large-scale smuggling along this route continued in 2020.
Guillaume de Brier, a researcher at International Peace Information Service (IPIS), said estimates show Congo produced between 15 and 22 tonnes of gold last year, worth more than half a billion dollars, but levied just $72,000 of taxes. “This means than 99% of the gold extracted in DRC is smuggled to neighboring countries,” he said.