UK company, Serabi, mining gold in Amazon without consent : Report

A UK company has been mining gold in the Amazon rainforest without permission from the Brazilian land agency and doesn't even have any consent from the nearby Indigenous communities, as per the investigation conducted by the Guardian. The firm, Serabi Gold has been mining and blasting 4.5 metre-wide tunnels and trucking ore from the Coringa project site in Pará state, reported the Guardian. According to the report,  ownership of the area has been disputed and the land has been allegedly occupied by illegal land-grabbers, as per the interviews of the land agency officials conducted by the Guardian. The UK company has been mining at the Coringa mine, which is located in an area known as Terra Nossa. It was a part of Baú Indigenous land, where the Kayapó Mekrãgnoti people live, till 2003. However, in 2006, the government land agency Incra set aside this part of the Baú land for settlement by small-scale family farmers.

Serabi Gold miners in the Amazon rainforest 

While talking about the case, according to the Serabi, it has been fully compliant with the Brazilian legal mining framework and has been working on the process for an impact study with the local communities. This would lead to the successful grant of the full installation licence. However, the case has shown the ethical quagmire of land and mining regulations in Brazil but this depends on widely different interpretations from government to government, or bureau to bureau. Further, according to the Incra official, Antônio José Ferreira da Silva said, "Benedito simply appropriated the land and said that it was his. So much so that we have an [ongoing] administrative process at Incra to take back these areas," in a 2017 report about the unauthorised mining.

According to Incra, one of those who claimed a plot there without authorisation was Benedito Gonçalves Neto. 
The people living in that area had moved to other parts of the area, however, in 2016 a Canadian mining company called Chapleau struck a deal with Neto, as per an Incra report. Notably, the Canadian mining company is now wholly owned by Serabi as of December 2017. Under this deal, Chapleau gave a one-off payment of $21,428, monthly payments of $1,428, and royalties from any ore extracted and in return, the company has been given the right to use the land as it wished, including mining, deforestation, and construction of buildings and tailings ponds. “From the signing of the contracts Chapleau effectively controlled the areas, acting as an enclave in the settlement project,” noted Incra in its 2017 report. 

Meanwhile, the local people who have been residing in the nearby areas have voiced against it and claimed that they have not been consulted before the mining began. Bepdjo Mekrãgnotire, a member of the Kayapó people, said that he got to know about the mining after the sound of the explosion. “We were collecting Brazil nuts last year and the noise scared us. That’s when we found out,” said Bepdjo. Further, he added, “The company should have consulted us before, because we have the right to speak, to charge. They are already working without consulting us, and we want to be compensated.”