EA’s unholy nexus: Diamonds, guns and money-laundering

People in this illegal business are looked upon as untouchables.

Tanzania is one of the most underappreciated players in the smuggling of gold from the DRC and the smuggling of weapons to the DRC.

According to interviews by Keith Harmon Snow in March 2007, the Mwana Africa airstrip at Zani is used to fly gold to Tanzania, which is also sometimes shipped out by road through Uganda.

It would be useful to follow the flows of funds starting from the mining companies and ending with the taxes and licence fees that reach the Treasury. But this will not be enough to solve the problem.

Namibia, the 2009 chair of the Kimberley Process, warned that blood diamonds could be making a comeback, noting that Internet sales and postal shipments have “proved it difficult to track and reconcile rough diamond shipments.”

A campaign against money laundering co-ordinated by several institutions (banks, the OECD, The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and Interpol) provides a promising avenue of co-operation with current attempts to monitor the origin of valuable resources.

On the one hand, these institutions could make use of additional information on illicit exports.

On the other hand, the measures taken by institutions to fight money laundering would help the legitimate resource industry by creating additional problems for smugglers and, therefore, raising the cost of smuggling.