U.S. will not prosecute Miami gold refinery after money laundering probe

ARE Holdings

18/04/2019 14:28

By Peter Hobson
    LONDON, April 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. Attorney's Office said
it has agreed not to prosecute one of the country's biggest gold
refineries, Republic Metals Corporation (RMC), after an
investigation into possible money laundering. 
    The probe is part of a broader crackdown by U.S. authorities
on imports of gold from South American countries such as
Colombia and Peru that is illegally mined or used to launder
drug money. 
    Investigators in 2018 charged https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/four-peruvian-members-multi-billion-dollar-international-gold-money-laundering-scheme
 another U.S. refiner, Elemetal, with buying billions of
dollars' worth of illegal gold from South America. Several of
its employees received jail terms. 
    The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of
Florida said on Wednesday it had agreed a non-prosecution deal
with RMC after "an investigation focusing on money laundering
and violations of the Bank Secrecy Act."
    RMC would continue to cooperate with an ongoing
investigation and improve its anti-money laundering and
compliance programs, it said in a statement on its website. 
    It did not say which actions were being investigated. 
    Miami-based RMC declared bankruptcy last year. It is being
bought by rival refiner Asahi  5857.T .  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL5N1ZV606
    No one at RMC was available to comment. Asahi declined to
comment.    
    A U.S. Justice Department document published by a U.S.
bankruptcy court this week said RMC requested the details of the
investigation not be released without a court order. 
    The document, dated March 8, said only that the actions were
"serious and worthy of investigation."
    It said RMC had handed over more than 100,000 emails and
WhatsApp messages, spent more than $1 million beefing up
compliance and committed to spending at least $250,000 more over
the next three years. 
    It also said RMC had "effectively eliminated" aggregators
from among its suppliers. Aggregators are companies which gather
and resell metal from numerous, often small-scale, miners,
making it difficult to trace the source of their gold.
    "Although the Company's compliance program had in the past
failed to prohibit the on-boarding of several suppliers who
ultimately proved suspicious, the Company, on its own, severed
relationships with each of these suppliers before it became
aware of any governmental investigations," the Justice
Department document said. 
    "There is no evidence that any of these relationships was
initiated with an intention to violate the money laundering
statutes of this or any other country."
    The Attorney's Office said it was investigating together
with the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the Drug
Enforcement Administration. 
    

 (Reporting by Peter Hobson; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
 ((Peter.Hobson@thomsonreuters.com; +44 207 542 0083;))