In 2021, the authorities arrested 20 alleged members of a criminal organisation accused of laundering $1.3 billion Colombian pesos – approximately $323,000 USD. The organisation allegedly contacted low-income miners who didn’t have the infrastructure to extract gold and offered them services to commercialise and export the gold. The network allegedly falsified the gold origin certificates for the illicit gold, which made the millions worth of gold exports to the USA and Colombia’s free trade zones appear legal. The evidence revealed that 8.1 tonnes of gold extracted from mines in Antioquia, Chocó, Caldas, Bolívar and Córdoba were exported abroad between 2015 and 2021.