THE NEW YORK branch of British bank Standard Chartered, Liverpool FC’s main sponsor, acted as an intermediary in a financial transaction involving a Brazilian gold shipment seized by customs authorities over suspected irregularities in its declared origin, documents obtained by Repórter Brasil show.

The 15-kilogram shipment, valued at US$1.5 million, belonged to Coluna DTVM, a Brazilian securities distributor, and was bound for MD Overseas DMCC, a Dubai-based company that is part of India’s MD Overseas group. The Indian company is a member of the Responsible Jewellery Council, the world’s leading organization dedicated to setting standards and promoting responsible business practices in the jewellery and watchmaking sector.

Brazilian Federal Revenue inspectors said they found “strong inconsistencies” between the documentation submitted by Coluna and the findings of a technical examination carried out by the agency, prompting the seizure of the cargo at Guarulhos International Airport in São Paulo in November 2025.

The Federal Revenue Service’s main suspicion centers on 10 kg of gold bought by Coluna from third parties, about 8 kg of which came from 18 miners, according to purchase invoices submitted by the company.

The documents listed the mineral’s origin as areas in Peixoto de Azevedo, an Amazonian municipality in northern Mato Grosso, where a cooperative obtained authorization for exploration through Artisanal Mining Permits or PLG, in the abbreviation in Portuguese. A PLG is a simplified authorization issued by Brazil’s National Mining Agency, intended for small-scale mining. It has less stringent socio-environmental criteria than the mining concession required under the Mining Code for large-scale operations.

According to the Federal Revenue Service, “the individualized analysis and cross-checking of data on each seller showed that they were not cooperative members or artisanal miners, but rather true mining entrepreneurs operating on an industrial scale in gold extraction.” They allegedly used the PLG only to issue invoices “with the purpose of ‘laundering’ the origin of gold extracted from unidentified areas,” states an agency inspection report obtained by Repórter Brasil. Experts interviewed by Repórter Brasil say the practice may also be used to evade requirements imposed on large-scale mining operations.

Since December 2025, Coluna has been pursuing legal action to secure the release of the shipment. The metal remains in the custody of the Federal Revenue Service while the case is still being heard in court.

Bank acted as intermediary in dollar payment

The financial transaction documents show that Standard Chartered’s New York branch acted as an intermediary institution in the operation. In this role, the bank provides services to other financial institutions that require correspondent banking to settle payments in U.S. dollars.

Intermediary banks are not legally required to monitor the activity of the clients of the banks to which they provide correspondent banking services, according to the FATF, the Financial Action Task Force. The FATF is an independent intergovernmental body that sets global standards to address anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorist financing (CFT), and the financing of weapons of mass destruction proliferation.

The body considers, however, that such institutions should monitor the transactions of the originating bank to identify, for example, unusual activities or operations. “This would include ensuring that the original bank has robust policies in place to address illicit finance risks,” says Julia Yansura, program director for Environmental Crime and Illicit Finance at the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.

Pavel Boev, a sustainable supply chains and regulations researcher at Profundo, a Netherlands-based organization, explains that intermediary banks may have access to basic information about a dollar transfer, including client names, the banks involved and payment details. However, they may not necessarily see the documents supporting the commercial transaction, such as invoices, mining licences or customs files. “As a result, unless the payment data itself contains red flags, the intermediary bank may have limited ability (and, currently, no clear U.S. legal obligation) to verify whether the gold was legally or sustainably mined,” Boev says.

When contacted, Standard Chartered declined to comment on the case. Liverpool FC and MD Overseas did not respond to Repórter Brasil’s questions by the time of publication.

The report also contacted Coluna’s representatives and lawyers, but likewise received no response. In the lawsuit filed to seek the release of the shipment, the company states that, even after submitting additional documents requested, such as invoices for the acquisition of the gold, and providing clarifications, “Customs Enforcement surprisingly remained inflexible, without explaining the reasons for its refusal to clear the goods.” According to the DTVM’s defense, this amounts to illegality and abuse of power.

In a statement to Repórter Brasil, the customs office at Guarulhos International Airport said it could not provide details about Coluna’s blocked gold shipment because of tax confidentiality rules. It added that customs authorities have a duty to inspect and prevent the export of gold classified as a financial asset “whenever evidence of irregularities is found.” According to the agency, the Federal Revenue Service has identified, in other cases, “documentation indicating mining disguised as garimpo,” and its actions in similar blocked-shipment cases have been upheld by the judiciary.

US$8.2 million in gold sales in 2024

Among the businessmen allegedly involved in the scheme, according to the Federal Revenue Service, are the brothers Ray Robson Manica and Fabio Raul Manica. A report produced by the Customs Risk Management Service at Guarulhos Airport states that, in 2024 alone, the two allegedly sold about R$41 million (approximately US$8.2 million) of gold to various clients.

The Manica brothers are partners in Grupo Manica Gold, a company that supplies equipment, parts and mechanical services for garimpo and mining operations. According to the agency, Ray owns seven excavators, six tractors and several trucks. Fabio, meanwhile, allegedly recorded R$4.86 million (US$972,000) in expenses in invoices in 2024 and 2025, including the purchase of 876,000 liters of diesel, an “absolutely incompatible volume for artisanal or associative mining activity,” according to the report.

“876,000 liters in just over a year is not the consumption of an artisanal miner,” says André Porreca Ferreira Cunha, a federal prosecutor at the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Amazonas. “An artisanal miner uses small engines, portable equipment, perhaps a pump or two. That volume can only be explained by heavy machinery operating continuously. Industrial mining, in short, disguised as artisanal mining,” he adds.

For the Federal Revenue Service, the production volume declared by the brothers “makes it impossible to claim that the mineral was extracted through personal artisanal mining, typical of the individual work of a garimpeiro.”

Partner in a gold-buying post and cooperative director

The Federal Revenue Service also analyzed the case of José Antônio da Silva Filho, a partner in J.A. Metais Preciosos, a gold-buying post based in Peixoto de Azevedo, in Mato Grosso state. Over the past two years, according to the agency, the businessman recorded about R$15 million (US$3 million) in purchases, including the acquisition of five excavators, one tractor and one loader, worth a total of R$9 million (US$1.8 million).

Among the gold sellers to Coluna was also Claudio André Loésia, one of the directors of Coogavepe, the Cooperative of Miners of the Peixoto River Valley, and a partner at Gold Mine, which trades precious metals in Peixoto de Azevedo. In 2024, Loésia sold R$10 million (US$2 million) worth of gold to Coluna alone.

The volume sold by the businessman “is equivalent to around 14 kg, a quantity that is technically unlikely to be extracted by a single individual, given the need to process tons of rock or river tailings to obtain that amount,” the oversight agency assessed.

Business partnerships do not invalidate miner status, businessmen say

In response to questions sent by Repórter Brasil, the brothers Ray and Fabio Manica said the facts mentioned in the report are the subject of an ongoing administrative procedure and that, so far, there has been no final administrative or judicial decision.

The businessmen emphasized that the difference between the industrial mining regime and the PLG regime “lies primarily in the type of authorization granted and the nature of the exploitation, not in isolated indicators such as production volume, revenue, equipment fleet or consumption of inputs.”

The Manica brothers also stressed that legislation allows garimpo mining under a cooperative regime, which may involve “the joint efforts of cooperative members, shared equipment and machinery, and common logistics, including the acquisition and consumption of inputs such as fuel,” and that holding ownership or stakes in parallel business activities “is not, from a legal standpoint, the same as the condition of being a cooperative miner.” The full statement can be read here.

Repórter Brasil also contacted Cooagavepe and the legal representatives of businessmen José Silva Filho and Claudio Loésia by email and phone, but received no response by the time of publication.

Dubai buyer and jewellery certification

MD Overseas DMCC is part of India’s MD Overseas group, a member of the Responsible Jewellery Council. The council also has its own certification seal, and MD Overseas’ operations in India were certified by the organization until March this year.

In response to Repórter Brasil, the RJC said it recognizes “the seriousness of the issues raised” by the report and stated that MD Overseas in Dubai was not included in the scope of the most recent certification of MD Overseas in India.

The RJC also said it is reviewing the information presented by the report in accordance with its policies and procedures. “As a matter of policy, the RJC does not comment publicly on potential compliance reviews or ongoing internal processes,” the organization said. The full statement can be read here.

Absence of rules on technical aspects

Gregor Daflon, spokesperson for Greenpeace Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples Front, points out that the law that created the PLG did not establish restrictions on the scale or techniques used in this type of extraction.

“This absence creates a regulatory gap that was quickly occupied by operations with significant environmental impact [which], formally, continue to be classified as garimpo,” he explains.

One example of garimpo mining operated on an industrial scale, according to Greenpeace, can be seen in the operations of Coogavepe itself.

According to a survey by the organization, the cooperative has 210 active mining processes covering an almost continuous area of about 290,000 hectares in the far north of Mato Grosso. In this area, according to Greenpeace, the cooperative declared that it extracted more than 27 tons of gold under CFEM, Brazil’s Financial Compensation for Mineral Exploration, between 2018 and 2023.

“What we see in practice is a continuous, industrial-scale operation, incompatible with the legal concept of artisanal mining,” Daflon summarizes.

“There is no way to reconcile the legal figure of the garimpeiro with someone who operates a fleet of trucks, dozens of excavators and tractors, and consumes fuel on an industrial scale,” adds André Porreca, from the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office. “Anyone working like that is not an artisanal miner; they are a mining entrepreneur. And a mining entrepreneur needs a mining concession, proper environmental licensing and all the obligations that come with that,” he argues.

The prosecutor is the author of an ongoing public civil action filed against Brazil’s National Mining Agency in February 2025 to challenge the absence of technical rules and demand the creation of standards capable of distinguishing artisanal mining from commercial mining, including the definition of permitted machinery and extraction limits.

Asked about the case, the agency did not respond to Repórter Brasil by the time of publication.

Gold without fingerprint

Coluna’s export to Dubai also included 3 kg of gold purchased from another securities distributor, FD Gold. In the case of this shipment, Coluna stated that it had acquired the mineral on the secondary market, meaning it had already been purified. According to the Federal Revenue Service report, this justification “led the exporter not to provide any proof of the gold’s legal origin.”

According to the expert report carried out by the Federal Revenue Service and attached to the case file, after the beneficiation and metallurgical concentration of the gold, “information about the mineral’s formation environment was erased,” making it “unlikely that the area where the goods were extracted can be identified.”

:: Read also: Gold mining companies facing environmental lawsuits and fines got R$90 million in tax breaks ::

When contacted, FD Gold said in a statement that it “does not condone, under any circumstances, unlawful or criminal acts” and said that, due to tax confidentiality, it cannot provide information about purchase and sale operations involving gold as a financial asset. The DTVM also stated that it complies with the regulations applicable to the sector. The company’s full response can be read here.

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