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🚨 New investigation just dropped 🚨 For years, tainted Venezuelan gold reached one of the most prestigious Swiss refineries. Clear red flags didn’t prevent more than 70t of gold, valued at $2.2B, to enter the global markets via the front door. 🧵1/5

Leaked documents show how the gold was moved by a broker in Curacao, who received it from Venezuela and shipped it to Europe. When it reached Swiss customs, the Country of Origin was the Caribbean island, despite the absence of mines or enough pawn shops to justify those volumes. 🧵2/5

The gold was sourced in Venezuela, where the suppliers would use it to switch bolivares into dollars. Among them, an individual currently on trial in Brazil for trafficking Venezuelan gold and another who admitted of running an illegal currency exchange scheme through gold. 🧵3/5

Gold was moved under the label of “gold scrap”, hence differentiating it from the highly problematic Venezuelan mining sector. The refinery said its own laboratory tests confirmed this. But a sample of data we independently obtained seems to contradict this claim 🧵4/5