Peter Ferrari dies of Covid

Pedro David Perez Miranda, 'Peter Ferrari' died Sept 28, 2020 in a Lima hospital of Covid.

NTR Metals was the largest money-laundering prosecution involving precious metals in U.S. history. “The scope of the conspiracy is enormous,” a federal prosecutor said. Federal prosecutors in Miami charged 3 NTR traders with money laundering, saying the three men bought $3.6 billion of illegal gold from criminal groups in Latin America. The scandal shut down NTR and cost its Dallas-based parent company, Elemetal, the ability to trade gold on bullion and commodity exchanges.

Prosecutors claimed the gold traders, who eventually pleaded guilty, fueled “illegal gold mining, foreign bribery and narcotics trafficking.”

Pedro Pérez Miranda - Peter Ferrari

In 2012, NTR did little business in Latin America. The next year, it struck a rich vein, becoming the largest U.S. importer of Peruvian gold with $980m worth. They did it with help from Peruvian Pedro Pérez Miranda, who laundered drug money through the gold trade. As the U.S. war on drugs undercut cash flow of narcos, dealers diversified into Latin America’s gold industry. By using drug profits to mine and sell gold, criminals can launder staggering amounts of money.

NTR’s Peruvian operations collapsed at the end of 2013 when police raided a storage facility outside Lima holding gold that belonged to Ferrari and others.

Agents seized $18.8m worth of gold. But the party wasn’t over — it moved to neighboring countries. In 2014, NTR began smuggling gold across the border to Ecuador and Bolivia.

Illegal mining has devastated rainforests.

When local governments in those countries also began cracking down the party moved again, this time to Colombia. In 2015, NTR’s imports from Colombia soared to $722m. That accounted for more than half of the country’s gold exports to the US. Colombia exported 64 tons of gold in 2016, much of it to the United States. That same year, Colombia’s legal mining operations produced only eight tons. A large part of the gap between what Colombia’s big mines produce and what the country exports is unlicensed and untaxed gold — often unearthed at any cost by operations controlled by narco-traffickers and other criminals.

Cartel associates pose as precious-metals traders to buy and mine gold. Cocaine profits are their seed money. They sell the metal through front companies to refineries. Once complete, cocaine kingpins have turned their dirty gold into clean cash. To the outside world, they’re not drug dealers; they’re gold traders.