Illegal mining was facilitated by a law sanctioned by Dilma in 2013.| Photo: Felipe Werneck/Ibama

The advance of illegal mining, which has been pointed out as one of the reasons for the humanitarian tragedy of the Yanomami in the north of the country, has as one of its main causes a law authored by PT deputy Odair Cunha (PT-MG), which was sanctioned by former president Dilma Rousseff in 2013. The law establishes the presumption of “good faith” in gold trading, that is, the seller’s word is sufficient to attest that the origin of the gold is legal.

The information, which is from 2022, stems from a study by Instituto Escolhas, and was retrieved by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo on Thursday (9). Research shows that illegal mining began to grow precisely after the law was passed, especially from 2015 onwards. Data from Mapbiomas, an initiative of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimation System of the Climate Observatory, also point to a growth in gold prospecting in Roraima from the same year.

The law makes enforcement and punishment of illegal gold operations more difficult. As a result, the practice of “heating up” gold – that is, bringing illegal gold to the formal market – ends up spreading. Along with illegal mining, the law signed by Dilma may have helped to bring crime to the region: since 2013, homicide rates have increased by about 20% in indigenous and environmental protection areas in the Amazon that have gold deposits.