Dirty Gold explores illegal (wildcat) mining (mainly) in Peru, and the dubious ways gold brokers - such as those detailed in this book - manage to sell or obtain that gold to be recycled and sold to other entities or made into consumer goods.

I'll say this right off the bat: writers of narrative nonfiction could use this as a textbook. It is intelligently laid out, the cast of characters not only denoted before the book begins, but named and described in the text in a way that does not require constant flipping to the beginning to see who is who, the history of illegal mining given (but not in an overwhelming way) along with the sociological, economic, corruption, and political ties to it, and how the various schemes worked to get the gold out of South America. It's masterful.

At its base, this book is about three men in Miami - Juan Pablo Granda, Samer Barrage, and Renato Rodriguez, dubbed the three amigos - working on behalf of a larger company, manage to bring an astonishing $3,6 billion worth of mainly Peruvian gold to their company. In doing so, both they, and their primary local buyer in Peru, go to a great number of steps to obscure the actual origin of the gold. Those steps include the creation of fake/shell companies, smuggling Peruvian gold to other countries in order to export it to the US, and failed or too-loose vetting of the supposed exporting companies in Peru that declared the gold obtained in a legal manner.

If you're interested in anything related to gold, money laundering, smuggling, political and law enforcement corruption, sociological, ecological, and health impacts of illegal mining, and the utter chasm between those riding high on the backs of those in abject poverty, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Absolutely a five out of five star read. I'd also recommend "A Most Wicked Conspiracy", about the Alaskan gold rush, another five star read.

Thanks to Public Affairs and NetGalley for the review copy.

Do you remember back in the 1980's and 1990's when you begin to here the stories about blood diamonds ? You know those that are mined in warzones and used to finance insurgencies and different criminal elements. This is the story as the title reveals about dirty gold being gathered by illegal mines in regions of South America with a primary focus on the country of Peru and the three individuals to bring as much gold to United States and in the end what leads to their downfall. It also talks about the environmental disaster this these people are or were creating with the methods they used to extract the gold. I found it interesting the methods that various agencies recognized that things were amiss and it is staggering the amount of gold that they were buying up. There was so much money to be made that even South American drug gangs were laundering their drug money buy gold and melted it down to pass off as mined gold. This is a fascinating read.

I received a pre-release copy from NetGalley. This was an in depth look the way people took advantage of lax laws and made a lot of money getting “dirty” gold into the US. The book was very interesting and the characters could have a movie made about this scheme. I had no idea about this topic and after reading this book, I won’t look at another piece of jewelry the same way.

This was an excellent read. It was truly eye opening to learn about the how lucrative dirty gold is and how destructive to both environments and people. The authors did a great job with research and the storytelling.