Minister suspends good faith to certify origin of gold sold in Brazil

Minister Gilmar Mendes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), decided, last night (4), to suspend an excerpt from a law that provides for the presumed legality, without the need for proof, of gold sold in Brazil, as well as the good faith of metal buyers.

With the decision, he responded to a request from the Green Party (PV), made in a direct action of unconstitutionality filed in January of this year, after the repercussion of the serious humanitarian and environmental impacts of illegal mining in the Yanomami Indigenous Land.

The PV argued that the norm, which appears in article 39 of Law 12,844/2013, “made private monitoring unfeasible by making the buyer not responsible, which encouraged the illegal market, leading to the growth of environmental degradation and increased violence in the municipalities where mining is illegal”.

The minister agreed with the argument, emphasizing that “this spurious consortium, formed between illegal mining and criminal organizations, needs to be paralyzed as soon as possible. The granting of a precautionary measure, by the Federal Supreme Court, is the appropriate and necessary means for this purpose”.

In addition to suspending the section of the law that deals with the subject, Gilmar Mendes gave the federal government 90 days to adopt a new normative framework for the inspection of the gold trade, “especially regarding the verification of the legal origin” of the metal.

The STF minister justified the urgency of the injunction (provisional decision) in view of the environmental and humanitarian damage and the increase in generalized criminality caused by illegal mining. He submitted the decision for referendum of the plenary of the STF, in virtual plenary, as soon as possible.

gold trade

The decision took into account the manifestation of several supervisory bodies for the gold trade in Brazil, such as the National Mining Agency (AMN) and the Central Bank (BC).

The magistrate decided to grant the injunction a few hours after the Attorney General of the Republic, Augusto Aras, manifested himself, yesterday afternoon (4), for the overthrow of the norm that provided for the presumed legality of gold and the good faith of buyers.

“The purchasing institutions (DTVMs) are the only ones that have contact with the seller, and are endowed with the necessary conditions – or can promote actions in this sense – to investigate possible irregularities, as reinforced in the information provided by the Central Bank. They are exclusively responsible for making the gold from mining formally enter the financial market”, wrote Aras in his opinion.