Illegal gold mining in Colombia spreads, UN survey shows

Key points

• Alluvial gold mining in Colombia covered 118,410 hectares in 2025, up 4.5% on the year, a government and UN satellite survey found
• 75% of that area is mined illegally, and the illegal part grew 10% in a year
• Chocó, Antioquia and Bolívar hold 82% of the illegal area; armed groups are present in 85.6% of mining municipalities
• Colombia exported about $3.9bn of gold in the first eleven months of 2025, official trade data show

Illegal gold mining in Colombia is still spreading. Three quarters of the 118,410 hectares of river and floodplain gold workings that satellites picked up across the country in 2025 had no permit of any kind, according to an annual survey by the Ministry of Mines and Energy and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), published on 2 October.

Why it matters: A large part of the gold Colombia sells abroad starts in pits that fund armed groups and poison rivers with mercury. Refiners and buyers in the United States, Italy and Canada carry that risk, and record prices are making it bigger.

The survey maps the scars that dredges leave on land. Of the total, 75% is illicit, 21% has permits and 4% is moving towards legal status. The illegal part grew 10% over the year, faster than the total, which has risen three years running from 105,060 hectares in 2023. High prices are the pull, and gold's rise is felt across the region: Brazil's central bank has doubled gold's share of its reserves.

Where is the illegal mining?

Mostly on the Pacific side and in the north west. Mining showed up in 15 of Colombia's 32 departments, but three hold 82% of the illegal area: Chocó with about 41,500 hectares, Antioquia with about 24,300 and Bolívar with about 7,200, the daily Portafolio reported from the report's tables.

Ten municipalities account for 54% of all illegal workings. Five are in Chocó (Quibdó, Istmina, Río Quito, Nóvita and El Cantón de San Pablo), four are in Antioquia (El Bagre, Cáceres, Zaragoza and Nechí) and one, Ayapel, is in Córdoba.

Much of the land is protected. About 58,200 hectares, 49% of the total, sit where mining is banned, 43,000 of them in the Pacific Forest Reserve, and mining inside national parks rose 153% between 2023 and 2025. Black communities' collective lands took 61% of last year's increase.

Who controls the river gold?

Armed groups do, in most places. At least one illegal armed group operates in 85.6% of the municipalities where the survey found mining, 118 of them against 114 a year earlier. Coca was grown in 79 of those municipalities in 2024, and the two economies overlap on about 48% of the mined area. Security sources told Reuters that illegal gold is now the second-largest source of money for these groups after cocaine.

The biggest of them, the Clan del Golfo, which calls itself the Ejército Gaitanista de Colombia, is the army's main target in Chocó. In June troops destroyed 81 mining units in San Isidro, in Río Quito, including 15 large dredges known locally as "dragones brasileños", 66 motors and 88 pumps, the army said.

Mercury is the other cost. Colombia banned its use in gold mining in July 2018 under Law 1658, yet the Environmental Investigation Agency, a campaign group, found that at least 40 tonnes were smuggled in from Mexico between 2019 and 2025 for mines in Antioquia and Chocó, El País of Cali reported.

How much gold does Colombia produce and export?

Officially, a lot, and most of it informally. The country produced about 1.82 million ounces in 2024, roughly 57 tonnes, according to the Asociación Colombiana de Minería. Exports of non-monetary gold reached about $3.9bn in January to November 2025, 9.5% more than a year earlier, even though the volume shipped fell 22.7%, the mining planning unit UPME reported from DANE trade data.

On our price data, gold averaged about $3,440 an ounce in 2025, 44% more than in 2024, and it has averaged about $4,530 so far in 2026. Exports followed: August's gold sales abroad were about $708m, up 127% on a year earlier, DANE said this month. Even about 23% below January's record, the price is far above what made a river claim worth working three years ago.

Estimates of the illegal share run high: Colombia's unit against transnational organised crime puts more than 80% of national gold output down as illegal, Infobae reported.

What is the government doing?

Mines Minister María Nohemí Arboleda set out three fronts: formalise miners who want to be legal, go after the criminal networks, and restore damaged land. With the Defence Ministry and the Attorney General's office, the government plans to seize assets of mining mafias under asset-forfeiture law, and it has restricted where excavators can enter the country. "There is a confrontation between the State and the criminal economies that use gold to finance violence," she said, and she called on gold-buying countries to demand traceability.

The National Mining Agency (ANM) launched a platform in May that gives each sale a single code from mine to export. Registration is voluntary for now.

What it means for buyers abroad

The United States took about $1.5bn of Colombia's $4.1bn in gold exports in 2024, UN trade data show. After a New York Times investigation in April found Colombian gold tied to criminal networks inside the US Mint's supply chain, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ordered a review of the Mint's sourcing. In February this year, Italy and Canada ranked second and third, DANE figures show.

For refiners, the survey is a map of where the risk sits: ten named municipalities. With gold testing the top of its October range near $4,200, those rivers will keep drawing dredges.