Billions of dollars' worth of gold is being smuggled out of Africa every year through the United Arab Emirates, an investigation by Reuters news agency has found.
Reuters uses customs data which it is says shows that the UAE imported much more gold from some African countries than those countries said they had exported – to a sum of 67 tonnes in 2016.
Industrial mining firms in Africa told Reuters they did not send their gold to the UAE - indicating that its gold imports from Africa come from informal sources.
Informal sources are now "large-scale and dangerous" operations run by foreign-controlled criminal syndicates, Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo is quoted as telling a mining conference in February.
The UAE foreign ministry and the federal customs authority did not respond to Reuters.
The news agency points out that some of the discrepancies can be legitimately explained - as a result of shipping costs and taxes being declared differently, a time-lag between a cargo leaving and arriving, or simply mistakes. And some could be recycled gold.
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