Midas Men

A sweeping investigation into Barrick Gold and the making of a global mining empire

At the apex of the global gold-mining industry stands Barrick Gold Corporation, a multinational once hailed as the largest, richest, and most cost-effective gold-mining company in history. Yet despite its immense influence, Barrick remains a cipher—a black box. What is clear is that its extraordinary wealth has come at a steep cost: allegations of large-scale environmental destruction, brutal labor practices, and collusion with authoritarian regimes.

At the center of Barrick’s extraordinary rise was its founder, Peter Munk, a charismatic Hungarian-born entrepreneur who transformed a run-and-gun mergers-and-acquisitions vehicle into a global gold-mining empire. But Munk’s story—and Barrick’s—is inseparable from the remarkable cast of people who enabled, profited from, and resisted that ascent: dealmakers, PR hacks, politicians, arms dealers, mercenaries, and miners, as well as the activists, whistleblowers, and local communities who stood in the path of extraction, often at enormous personal risk.

In Midas Men, groundbreaking investigative journalist Richard Poplak traces Barrick’s rise from its origins to global dominance, spanning the mining frontiers of the Americas to Tanzania and the Philippines, constructing a sweeping exposé of the modern extractive industry.

Combining deep reporting with vivid character portraits, Midas Men lays bare the machinery of the global gold-mining industry—and pays tribute to the people who risked everything to confront it.