Who Is Smuggling Gold… and Who Is Protecting the Smugglers? (2)

Reckoning

Adel Al-Baz

1

Two pressing questions crossed my mind as I began writing this article:

The first question:

What is the benefit of the government telling the people that it produced 70 tons of gold when 55 tons of that amount cannot be accounted for, or were smuggled out without generating any revenue for the national treasury? What is there to celebrate in such painful news, repeated year after year?

The second question:

What exactly is smuggling? More specifically, what do we mean when we speak of “gold smuggling”?

The government defines gold smuggling as gold that is on its way out of the country—or has already left the country—without going through the official channels, procedures, and documentation required by law. This narrow definition lies at the heart of the problem.

By contrast, gold-producing African countries adopt a broader and more precise definition. They regard any gold found in the possession of an individual or entity without an official certificate proving ownership, identifying the seller, and supported by documented serial numbers and receipts, as illegally smuggled gold. Such gold is immediately confiscated and its holder prosecuted.

Through this clear definition, those countries are able to exercise effective control over their national wealth.

2

The deeper one digs into Sudan’s gold sector, the more one uncovers veins of corruption stretching through poor administration and weak regulation. Unfortunately, these problems have persisted across successive governments and continue to this day.

Conflicting policies, lax legislation, and contradictory decisions have resulted in the loss of billions of dollars.

3

In the investigations I am currently conducting into the gold sector, and as discussed in the first part of this article, we discovered that the government itself bears primary responsibility for gold smuggling, either directly or through its affiliated companies.

In this second part, we will examine how the government’s confusing and contradictory policies—changing whenever leadership changes at the Central Bank or the Minerals Company—have destabilized the gold sector, opened the door to widespread smuggling, and produced disastrous outcomes.

4

The government has adopted a series of inconsistent and confusing policies:

• At times, it allows private-sector companies and state-owned enterprises to export gold.
• Then it reverses course and grants the Central Bank a monopoly over exports.
• It sets a minimum export threshold, only to later reduce it to a single kilogram.
• Sometimes it relies on security measures to combat smuggling, then abandons that approach in favor of purchasing gold at international market prices.

These constantly shifting policies bear primary responsibility for the ongoing disorder and have contributed to the smuggling of nearly 80 percent of officially declared gold production.

5

The second major problem is that successive governments, including the current one, have failed to adopt a unified strategy agreed upon by all relevant stakeholders.

Coordination among the Ministry of Minerals, the Central Bank of Sudan, security agencies, and legal authorities is virtually nonexistent. Information shared among these institutions is often contradictory, while policies within the sector itself are inconsistent and unsustainable.

Each institution pursues its own vision, turning the gold sector into a permanent arena of confusion and disorder.

The underlying problem is that every government body seeks to establish its own “private kingdom” within the state, making decisions independently and without oversight or adherence to a unified national strategy.

Instead of creating a single national council to manage the minerals sector—bringing together all stakeholders, exchanging information on a daily basis, and making coordinated decisions—we find coordination committees that are repeatedly formed and dissolved without addressing any of the sector’s many structural deficiencies.

6

The tragic outcome is clear.

At the end of 2025, the Ministry of Minerals announced in its official statement that the mining sector had produced 70 tons of gold.

Meanwhile, the Central Bank of Sudan’s 2025 Foreign Trade Summary Report stated that officially recorded gold exports did not exceed 14 tons.

The result: an estimated annual loss of approximately $8.5 billion.

• Declared production (2025): 70 tons, valued at roughly $10 billion.
• Official exports: 14 tons, valued at approximately $1.536 billion.
• Estimated loss: $8.5 billion.

That is the outcome—the tragedy, if you will.

So what have the responsible authorities done to address it?

Unfortunately, nothing of significant value has been done, nor have any meaningful results been achieved, as we shall see.

To be continued.