How Miami, a major destination for Venezuelan gold, is helping prop up Maduro’s regime

The rainforests of southern Venezuela are rich in a precious metal coveted by bankers, jewelers and consumer-electronics firms around the world. Over the past decade, impoverished wildcat miners under the control of Maduro’s army, Colombian guerrillas and Venezuelan crime syndicates have ravaged the fragile jungle, stripping away trees by the acre and contaminating waterways with toxic mercury, a destructive tool of the gold trade.
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