Dirty Gold
The Rise and Fall of an International Smuggling Ring
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3.5 • 8 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The explosive story of the illegal gold trade from South America, and the three Miami businessmen who got rich on it—until it all came crashing down.
In March of 2017, a team of federal agents arrested Juan Pablo Granda, Samer Barrage, and Renato Rodriguez, or as they came to be known, "the three amigos." The trio—first identified publicly by the authors of this book—had built a $3.6 billion dollar business in metals trading, mostly illegal Peruvian gold mined in the rain forest.
Their arrest and subsequent prosecution laid bare more than a scheme between a few corrupt traders. Dirty Gold lifts the veil on a massive and very illegal international business that is more lucrative than trafficking cocaine, and often just as dangerous.
As this award-winning team of current and former Miami Herald reporters shows, illegal gold mines have become a haven for Latin American drug money. The gold is sold to metals traders, and ultimately to scores of unwitting Americans in their jewelry and phones. By following the trail of these three traders, Dirty Gold leads us into a sprawling criminal underworld that has never before been in full view.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this shocking true crime epic, the four investigative journalist authors take a deep dive into the case of three Miami businessmen who built a multibillion-dollar smuggling empire that touched several continents and opened U.S. law enforcement's eyes to yet another avenue of immorality. From 2013 to 2016, Juan Pablo Granda, Renato Rodriguez, and Samer Barrage used their company, NTR Metals, to smuggle over $3.6 billion in illegally mined gold into the U.S. The NTR Metals case drew international condemnation for its role in exploiting a lesser-known illicit economy that rivals the cocaine and blood diamond trades in terms of harm to the countries of origin: dirty gold comes from an industry in which criminals use toxic chemicals and destructive mining practices to rip the precious metal from the Andes and Amazonian riverbeds, destroying whole ecosystems and poisoning impoverished communities. The authors take the reader beyond the sensational multiagency investigation to provide a comprehensive exploration of the international precious metal trade to show how a criminal enterprise can thrive with a product where melting can erase all traces of origin easier than documents can be forged. This is a must-read for fans of Matthew Hart's Diamonds and Roberto Saviano's ZeroZeroZero.
