The illegal dynamic
El Espectador, for all this, took on the task of investigating how illegal groups benefit from the illicit exploitation of the so-called “blue gold”, which is found in the ravines and river basins of the Colombian Orinoquia and is key to touch screen technologies. As confirmed by various sources to this newspaper, those who move the coltan – by land or river – must pay, on average, an extortion of 10% of its commercial value to the illegal groups in the area, which are mainly the ELN and the dissidents of Iván Márquez and Iván Mordisco. They even suggest that the illegal tax varies according to the amount, the area and the person who extracts it.
The commercial price of black sand, which includes coltan, is $98,000 per kilogram ($98 million per ton), according to the Prosecutor’s Office. Which means that the groups that demand this illegal payment charge $9,800 per kilogram. Between October 2022 and October 2023, the investigating entity seized 56 tons of black sand containing coltan and is aware that another 195 managed to be taken, presumably, to China. Those 251 tons are equivalent to almost $24,598 million in commercial value, which means that those who collect the illegal “tax” earned close to $2,460 million in those 12 months. These figures only represent the record kept by the Prosecutor’s Office, which implies that these would be much higher during that time.
Those who profit from this “vaccine”, and are in Vichada, Guainía and Guaviare, are the José Daniel Pérez Carrero eleno front, led by alias Copete; the Second Marquetalia by Iván Márquez, commanded by “Jhon 40”; and the Acacio Medina and Armando Ríos fronts, from the dissidents of Iván Mordisco. In this territory, these criminal gangs also confront and benefit from the trafficking of other types of elements, such as gold and cocaine.
Regarding dissidence, in February of this year, the Ombudsman’s Office also issued an early warning to warn of the serious risk suffered by the inhabitants of the municipalities of Inírida and the non-municipalized areas of Cacahual, Puerto Colombia, San Felipe and La Guadalupe. “The FARC dissidents commit attacks, kidnappings and restrictions on mobility in the midst of combat,” the entity said. In the midst of all this network about coltan trafficking, the name of “Jhon 40” also came up, who lives in Venezuela and has contact with organizations in both countries in charge of shipping the minerals, despite the fact that judicial offices did not touch on the issue.
According to sources consulted by this newspaper, the illegal exploitation of coltan is an issue that, like many others, does not respect the border between Colombia and Venezuela, especially because the ELN, an armed group that moves freely between the two countries , controls operational part. In addition to the coltan that is extracted irregularly in Colombia, a percentage of the material that ends up leaving the country abroad enters as contraband from Venezuela.
That is, the country functions as a triangulation platform to take the material abroad. For this, some sources suggest that an illegal collection is also made from those who have businesses in the Yapacana National Park, where the clashes occurred on that side of the border last September, and from the rafts that move along the Atabapo River, which They are managed by people from the communities.
In the neighboring country, coltan reserves are much larger. In 2016, President Nicolás Maduro signed a decree reserving coltan exploration and exploitation activities to the Venezuelan State. This decree “puts [al coltán] under the same conditions as gold, to be able to undertake new production models in favor of national economic growth,” explained Roberto Mirabal, Minister of Mining and Ecological Development.
However, the authorities know that some Colombian investors travel to Venezuela to buy the material from illegal miners and return with it to traffic it. According to information provided by the General Directorate of Carabineros and Environmental Protection (DICAR), some members of the indigenous communities, as well as Elenos, would be extracting coltan from the Orinoco Mining Arc, between the states of Amazonas and Bolívar, in Venezuela, in order to transport it by land to Colombian territory, using informal steps in the municipalities of Tibú, Rangovalía and Herrán, in Norte de Santander. Apparently, there would be complicity of the Venezuelan Guard. The Navy commented that there are no joint efforts with the Venezuelan authorities to try to reduce this problem, despite the reestablishment of binational relations with the arrival of Gustavo Petro to the Casa de Nariño.
In Colombia there are only titles for minerals associated with coltan, such as zirconium and tungsten. Coltan is extracted illegally through the alluvium method. Using dredgers, sand is sucked from the bottom and banks of rivers and brought to the surface. Another option is scraping the ravines. For this, picks, shovels and motor pumps are used to wash the ravines and banks of the channels where these minerals are found. The material does not come out pure, but mixed with many other minerals in what they call “black sands.” In the process of removing coltan from the country, efforts are made at various points to separate it from other materials.
At the exploitation sites, irregular miners carry out a first cleaning process. With magnets they extract tin, a metal that is sold separately and is easy to separate with that method. “What illegals almost always do is extract it, because it is also valuable and has other trade routes and other uses. Then, since it is heavy, they extract the tin and the pure ‘black sands’ remain. That’s where the coltan elements go,” says Fernando Jiménez, director of Environmental Crimes at the Prosecutor’s Office. When separated, the tin is left in cylindrical presentations, like gravel.
The routes to move it
As with cocaine, sometimes, before being transported, the “black sand” packages are marked with colors, depending on the place of origin. “The blue gold” then begins its transfer to the collection points, places where large quantities of the material are concentrated and a slightly more in-depth cleaning process is carried out. The three main ones have been identified in Villavicencio, Bogotá and Bucaramanga. Furnaces used to melt metals and form ingots or tubular containers have sometimes been found there.
From these three capitals, the coltan is moved to the ports of Buenaventura and Cartagena, as explained by Jiménez, from the Prosecutor’s Office. It is in transit where seizures by authorities are most common. These use guns to make a preliminary identification of the presence of coltan, again, similar to procedures with cocaine hydrochloride. Then it is necessary to carry out certainty tests in laboratories with samples of the seized material.
Although the problem of coltan is not, by far, of the same dimension as that of cocaine or gold, since it does not generate as many profits and the quantities that apparently move are much smaller, there are similar dynamics for its trafficking.
When they arrive at ports, the poisoned sands are placed in containers. To make them appear legal, false certificates of origin and environmental license are obtained. This newspaper consulted the port of Cartagena and its spokespersons assured that it did not have the power to open the cargo material and that this responsibility corresponded to the authorities, which is why it had no information about this illegal phenomenon. Furthermore, it is impossible to know, with certainty, from which port concession the illegal material leaves. For its part, the Buenaventura Regional Port Society said that it has not shown, in the traceability of the export process, the presence of coltan.
“Nor have we received from the port or judicial authorities, which are part of the solid processes that our terminal has, information that directly refers to the export of this mineral or any seizure operation,” they stated from that port.
But according to judicial sources, from there it is sent to Germany, Switzerland, Russia, China, Malaysia, France and Canada for the manufacture of mobile phones and other types of electronic devices. Its properties allow large amounts of information to be passed and energy optimized without overheating, and it is also used in the aerospace, military and medical industries.
News of coltan seizures are not new. The DICAR seized more than three tons in 2022 and it is known that the Prosecutor’s Office seized more than 50 tons in 2021, shipments that were determined to be from the ELN and dissidents. In the bunker they had already told this newspaper that, in 2009, the Sinaloa cartel and the Cifuentes Villa brothers became interested in coltan in the Colombian Orinoquia, especially in the Puinawai Park.
Even names such as Rafael Alberto Rodríguez Forero, who obtained an exploitation title in 1995 for El Caney de los Cristales, have emerged. According to what Mauricio Cárdenas, then Minister of Mines, said at the time, these types of legal titles have been used as havens for the legalization of illicit activities. In 2018, the promiscuous court of Puerto Carreño issued a conviction against Juan José Rivera, who was found in a warehouse with 375 kilos of minerals such as coltan, uranium and tungsten. However, sources from the Prosecutor’s Office point out that in Inírida, for example, there is a lack of legal sensitivity that means that the illegal exploitation of coltan is treated as a “non-judicializable” activity and that illegality is normalized.
It is not uncommon for coltan, like gold and precious stones, to end up in violent dynamics in the territories where it is found. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the countries with the largest number of mines of this mineral, “blue gold” has produced one of the deadliest wars on the planet.
In Colombia, for now, the “vaccines” for coltan trafficking continue to finance part of the dynamics of the criminal groups of the Orinoquia.
2023-11-18 23:10:05
#vaccine #illegals #charge #traffic #coltan #Colombia
