Blood Gold

A shocking exposé of the dirty trade of gold and how it is pushing the world‘s biggest rainforest to the brink of collapse. Gold has a powerful hold over our civilization. The precious metal first attracted the Spanish conquistadors to the new world. For the Incas, only royalty could wear gold. Louis XIV covered Versailles from floor to ceiling in gold. It is excess, wealth, domination and power. In this gripping investigation into the murky origins of gold, journalist Dan Collyns explores the world of gold mining in South America. From the Inca palaces stripped of their riches and the craters of illegal mining in the Amazon, to the Indigenous peoples fighting for survival to the firms laundering gold via the Swiss refineries, jewellery makers and bank vaults of the world - Collyns shows how the extraction and sale of ‘blood gold‘ in South America grew from a colonial history of plunder and oppression. More urgently, he will show how we can stem its flow. Travelling to the illegal mining operations deep in the Amazon, Collyns reveals the extraordinary levels of toxic mercury which are being spilled into the world‘s largest biome, the shocking sister trade of the many underage girls trafficked into sex slavery and the corruption the western hunger for gold has unleashed across South America - for criminal mafias, gold is an even bigger business than cocaine.