Editor’s Note
This article examines the opaque supply chain behind a major European mint’s gold, highlighting the insufficiency of current industry certifications and the systemic environmental and human rights issues in gold mining.
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The Austrian Mint sources its gold from Switzerland but cannot prove the origin and conditions of its mining.
Certifications such as those from the LBMA are considered insufficient, non-transparent, and do not meet EU requirements.
Gold mining is fundamentally problematic: environmental destruction, human rights violations, and a lack of transparency characterize the entire supply chain.
Gold price: around 3,000 euros per troy ounce, a 45% increase within one year.
Up to 90% of gold in Austria comes from Switzerland.
Switzerland refines gold but possesses almost no deposits of its own.
The EU Conflict Minerals Regulation has been in effect since 2021, but Swiss supply chains are subject to banking secrecy.
Gold connects people. Symbolically, as a golden ring seals a lifelong bond. Digitally, as a few milligrams of gold are built into mobile phones and laptops. Abstractly, as ton-heavy gold reserves stabilize currencies and thus societies.
In the wake of numerous crises, gold is booming, and so is its price. A troy ounce (approx. 31 grams) is now worth a good 45 percent more than a year ago, namely nearly 3,000 euros. Gold is “an excellent investment and particularly popular in economically uncertain times,” advertises the state-owned Austrian Mint AG on its website.
Alongside its incredible value, the precious metal is always associated with something less glamorous: the suspicion that a dirty business lies behind the shimmering piece of jewelry. The list of accusations against traders, mine operators, and refineries is long: child labor, money laundering, smuggling, expropriation, poisoned rivers, exploitation, illegal deforestation, deaths from mining accidents, organized crime.
Just in April, Greenpeace Germany published a report on “poison gold” from the Amazon. In recent years, 42 square kilometers of indigenous territory have been destroyed in connection with gold mining, rainforest has been cleared on a large scale, and rivers have been poisoned with mercury, the report states. The “most important hub” for this gold: Switzerland. Austria also sources gold from Switzerland, at least 90 percent according to various sources.
Is Austria also importing “poison gold”?
The WZ attempted to investigate where the Austrian Mint’s gold actually comes from. And, well, little of that “goes without saying.”
By the time the Austrian Mint’s gold is ready for sale domestically, it has already traveled a long, winding path.
According to its website, the Austrian Mint sources its gold bars from Switzerland, including from Argor-Heraeus. The refinery based in the canton of Ticino is one of the “Big 4” of the Swiss gold industry, alongside Valcambi, MKS PAMP, and Metalor. According to NZZ, the refinery processes gold worth several billion euros per year.
However, the fact that the Austrian Mint’s gold comes from Switzerland is at best half the truth. Switzerland itself has almost no gold deposits of its own; the precious metal is merely refined there. This means it is dried, weighed, examined, cleaned, melted, and cast into bars or coins.
But what path did the gold take before it arrived in Switzerland?
For EU countries, the so-called Conflict Minerals Regulation has been in effect since 2021, obliging importers to exercise due diligence along their supply chains. The aim of the regulation is: “to restrict the opportunities for armed groups and security forces to trade in certain raw materials and thereby avoid associated conflicts and serious human rights violations.” Companies like the Austrian Mint must demonstrate in a five-step process how they identify and, as far as possible, minimize risks along their supply chains.
The problem: “Importers often declare Switzerland as the country of origin of the gold, even though it frequently comes from conflict-affected regions,” states a study on the “Implementation of the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation in Austria.” And in Switzerland, the trail of the gold is lost.