Posted on 10/04/2024 2:27:43 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The illegal miners stole about 774 kg of gold and 938 kg of silver.
A foreigner who led an 80-man illegal gold mining operation in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan has been sentenced to five years’ jail and a 50 billion rupiah (US$3.2 million) fine for mining without a permit.
The Chinese national, identified only as YH by the Indonesian authorities, was arrested in May and will serve an additional six months in jail if he does not pay the fine, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.
Under Indonesian law, those convicted of mining without a permit may be jailed for up to five years and fined up to 100 billion rupiah.
News of illegal gold miners being convicted and sentenced in Indonesia is relatively rare compared to the number of reports on illegal mining accidents, the dangers of small-scale miners using mercury to extract gold, and some arrests made by the police.
(Excerpt) Read more at channelnewsasia.com ...
If you only have to serve six more months in order to keep $3.2 million, I think you stay another 180 days.
“They’re digging in the wrong place.”
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Its more than digging in the wrong place - its a deliberate crime.
The environmental damage those people do is horrendous; they often use mercury to recover the gold, sometimes the mercury is recaptured, sometimes not. Fish and animals die along the river - the water is undrinkable. Usually illegal mines are so remote that no one will come and clean up the mess, even if there were money to do it.
5 years in an Indonesian prison is likely a near death sentence. Those places are not the American country club prisons.
If my math is right, 774 kg = 27,302 ounces
Gold today is $2,653 / ounce.
That’s $72.4 million dollars he stole at today’s gold price.
He’s probably paying his people a few dollars a day and has maybe a million bucks of equipment on site. Gold has been going up a lot, so maybe he sold the bullion for $40 million. After expenses, maybe he cleared $30 million. Not bad.
And that’s ignoring the silver value.
If you only have to serve six more months in order to keep $3.2 million, I think you stay another 180 days.
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Those prisons are not like in America. Its like spending one more day in Hell. A Hell you might not emerge whole from or even alive.
I’m not saying it’s not a crime, just that it’s not one easy to pull off. There were 80 people working at a site. That’s hard to hide.
I’m guessing he short changed his payoff to the local officials.
Jungle gold mining is incredibly destructive to the environ - and in 3rd world like Malaysia, its far worse and done with high pressure water cannons to wash away the landscape to reach the gold.
It appears this feller’s “crime” was not paying off the gov officials and they nailed him for not having a “permit”, a paperwork crime.
Hatcher
He probably got away with it partly by paying people off. Maybe he didn’t pay off enough and/or the government decided it was so bad they had to do something.
Its remote - no need to hide - getting caught is not good, but for every one caught, others continue to run illegal mines - the government only has so much resource to go after those people.
You could watch Parker’s Trail episodes from this year to get a taste of what its like, even when the government makes great efforts to go after those people, even to shooting them on site, burning them out, and blowing up their operations.
Yeah, but if you make it five years, what’s another six months?
774 kg of gold is about 24,885 troy ounces, which is what weights of gold and other precious metals are measured in.
Yeah, but if you make it five years, what’s another six months?
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When life or death is a daily struggle, any one more day, let alone 6 months, could bring death at any moment. That’s 180 days with death near by, and no guarantee that you will live even one more hour, let alone a full day.
Of course being anally raped daily is also a good possibility.
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