American Military News August 04, 2022 Tribune News Service - Arab News
Russia smuggling gold from Sudan to fund war: CNN report
A network of Russian and Sudanese military leaders are colluding to plunder the African nation’s gold reserves and production, enabling Moscow to fund its ongoing war in Ukraine amidst increasingly severe Western sanctions, a CNN report published recently has claimed.
According to CNN’s sources, Russia allegedly operated 16 flights out of Sudan, Africa’s third largest producer of the precious metal, over the past 18 months.
CNN claimed a whistleblower from inside the Sudanese Central Bank showed reporters a photo of a spreadsheet revealing that 32.7 tons was unaccounted for in 2021. Using current prices, this amounts to $1.9 billion worth of missing gold, at $60 million a ton.
But the report stated that this could be an underestimate, and that $13.4 billion, or 90 percent of the country’s production, is lost through illegal means every year. CNN could not verify these figures in the report.
The CNN report claims that the scheme is the result of an agreement with Sudan’s increasingly unpopular military leadership in exchange for Russia’s military support to suppress the country’s pro-democracy movement.
More:
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/08/russia-smuggling-gold-from-sudan-to-fund-war-cnn-report/
