According to ENACT Africa, most of the illegally mined gold in Ghana is smuggled through clandestine networks to the United Arab Emirates. Ghana reportedly lost about US$1.1 billion in revenue from gold exports from 2019 to 2021. In Al Jazeera’s documentary Gold Mafia, which focused on gold trafficking in Africa, Alistair Mathias, a Canadian citizen, claimed to smuggle about US$40 million worth of gold out of Ghana every month to launder money for several African heads of state. In an interview, Mathias stated that “I can move as much as I want wherever I want for the most part... See, the best thing with gold is it is cash.”