Trade and the Smuggling of Gold from West Africa to the UAE

The cases of smuggling are not only limited to Libya and Sudan but are quite prevalent across the African continent. This chapter therefore considers several other cases of smuggling across the continent to give the reader a holistic view of how serious the scourge of smuggling is in Africa. The cases that are examined in detail in this chapter are those of the West African trade which is largely though not entirely a product of ASGM mining and is seemingly driven by various taxation regimes in the gold exporting countries. Gold smuggling has become a central feature of the growing ASGM activities in West Africa and a source of considerable revenue and foreign exchange losses for the countries where this activity occurs. While previously much of the quantitative analysis of gold smuggling was purely speculative, what has now changed is trade data from Dubai, now permits for the first time a more accurate, though by no means conclusive, estimation of the value of gold trade and the potential tax and royalty losses that stem from smuggling. Dubai has emerged by far the biggest trading centre for ASGM gold from the African continent though it is by no means the only relevant market.