Indigenous Leaders Bring $9B Illegal Gold Laundering Case to the UN — And Demand the Amazon Back

Aerial picture from an airplane of dredges at an illegal gold mining area in the Madre de Dios department, in Peru's southeastern Amazon region, on June 2, 2024. Illegal exploitation is ruthless, despite law enforcement prosecution in Madre de Dios, in southeastern Peru. Since 2017, this megadiverse department of 180,000 inhabitants has lost, on average, some 21,000 hectares of rainforest per year. (Credit: Photo by ERNESTO BENAVIDES / AFP) (Photo by ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP via Getty Images)

The Briefing

• More than a dozen Indigenous delegates from across the Amazon arrived in Vienna on October 19 to demand that the UN's 13th Conference on Transnational Organized Crime classify illegal mining as a security threat equal to arms and drug trafficking.
• Peru accounts for an estimated 44% of South America's illicit gold exports; illegal mining generated $9 billion in laundered assets between 2014 and 2024 — 60% of the country's total laundered financial flows — dwarfing drug trafficking in scale.
• At least 105 environmental defenders were killed across Latin America in 2025, representing 85% of 124 killings documented worldwide that year, as criminal networks controlling illegal gold, coca, and logging tighten their hold on communities resisting them.