As Venezuela opens its resources to foreign mining companies, environmentalists warn that a lack of safeguards opens the door to legalizing “blood gold” extracted under the control of a complex and resilient network of armed criminal groups.

TSXV-listed Gold Reserve, incorporated in Canada but headquartered in Bermuda and primarily U.S.-owned, holds a 45% stake in a joint mining concession in the Orinoco Mining Arc—a 111,843-square-kilometre area within the Amazonas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro states documented [pdf] as “the centre of Venezuela’s illicit gold mining and smuggling.”

Foreign, private companies like Gold Reserve can now hold mining concessions there without the need for a majority state partner, thanks to the new Organic Law of Mines Venezuela enacted in April. The country also announced a series of liberalization and opening measures for industries like oil and electricity amid a “new political moment” declared by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who came to power after the U.S. seized then-president Nicolás Maduro in January.

But without a plan to remove the criminal gangs and Colombian guerrillas that control gold mines in southern Venezuela, new foreign investments might worsen a vicious cycle of environmental destruction, ethnocide, and bribery, local advocacy groups tell The Energy Mix.

The Amazon Underworld project documented the exploitation and destruction of Indigenous communities through forced recruitment of children and men, and invasion of ancestral territories. In 2019, Crisis Group reported that miners paid protection fees or “taxes” in regular installments of gold. “Senior army positions in the region, especially in Bolívar state, are among the most popular postings in Venezuela,” Crisis Group wrote at the time, alleging that Venezuelan generals received US$800,000 worth of gold monthly in bribes.

“Many young people and children have left their families to go into these mines, a large number of people have disappeared, many are sick,” Helizandro Terán,the former Bishop of Ciudad Guayana, Bolívar, said in 2020. “This dream of gold has ended in the most horrible nightmare.”

At the same time, mining expansion has led to significant environmental destruction. Citizen-based group SOS Orinoco estimates that nearly 7,900 square kilometres of trees have been deforested in southern Venezuela in the last 20 years, with 37% of the forest loss occurring since 2025.

U.S., Venezuela Partner in Cleanup Operations

During halftime of the U.S. men’s soccer team’s opening World Cup game June 14, while his country led Paraguay 3-0, Donald Trump posted on social media that “El Niño Guerrero”, a leader of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang, had been killed in a “kinetic strike.”

El Tren de Aragua made millions in Venezuela’s illegal gold-mining regions, including in parts of the Orinoco Mining Arc, controlling access to some mines, extorting miners, and profiting from gold trafficking and related criminal activities.

Venezuela simultaneously led a military operation in Las Claritas and Kilómetro 88, the country ‘s biggest illegal gold mines, in the Sifontes municipality, in Bolívar state.

Meanwhile, U.S. mining investors visited the El Chocó plant of the Venezuelan Mining Corporation, said a local mayor, Jesús Coromoto Lugo. He claimed that 5,000 miners had been bused to Ciudad Guayana to prepare the area for future mining operations.

The cleanup extends beyond criminal organizations. In Las Claritas, “the state’s own officials have long been accused of benefiting from the illegal economy,” wrote organized crime expert Chris Dalby in his World of Crime Newsletter cited by Bloomberg News.

“That arrangement could survive under neglect. It could not survive a serious attempt to bring foreign capital back into Venezuelan mining.”

But analysts consulted by The Mix expressed doubts that things would improve. Venezuela has evicted thousands of miners before, with little impact on the illegal gold economy, they recalled.

They warned of an increase in extrajudicial executions and state violence in a vast, complex network of illegal actors who may not be so willing to give up the mines they have exploited for so long.

The military operations follow the normalization of diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the U.S. in March, when Rodríguez met with high-ranking Washington officials and mining executives, including Gold Reserve vice chair Paul Rivett.

Gold Reserve has a history of legal disputes against Venezuela, starting after former president Hugo Chávez confiscated its assets in 2009. Gold Reserve won a $740-million arbitration award in 2014. Then in 2016, the parties reached a payment agreement through the formation of the joint venture Siembra Minera, with Gold Reserve holding a 45% stake, plus an initial payment of $110 million for it to begin operations in Kilómetro 88—the same area where military operations killed Niño Guerrero this year. The concession was revoked again in 2022, and Gold Reserve sought compensation once again.

A day after Rivett’s meeting with Rodríguez, Gold Reserve—which had made its own recommendations to the new mining law—announced that it was “returning to Venezuela.”

‘Veneer of Legality’

Environmentalists are not enthusiastic about the new law. Sixteen NGOs criticized it for gaps in environmental safeguards and a failure to establish free, prior, and informed consent for Indigenous peoples. They accused it of “institutionalizing ecocide” in the Orinoco Mining Arc—source of Venezuela “blood gold” to Turkey and Switzerland.

Cristina Burelli, director of the NGO SOS Orinoco, says mining areas have been militarized since before the law was enacted, allowing the traffic of necessary mining goods: mercury, gas, floating dredges, heavy machinery, portable engines, and industrial hoses to bore the soil after deforestation to extract gold.

This is backed by what advocacy groups call a “hybrid governance” between the Venezuelan military and illegal armed groups including the Colombian guerrillas, like the National Liberation Army (ELN in Spanish). This illegal armed group relocated much of its operations and leadership into Venezuela after the 2016 Peace Agreement signed in Colombia.

Burelli cited a 2021 OECD report that concluded “all gold originating within Venezuela should be considered high-risk,” adding that the lack of clarity in the new law’s monitoring mechanisms leads the group to characterize it as a “veneer of legality,” with perverse consequences such as Venezuela becoming the largest source of malaria transmission in Latin America.

Venezuelan authorities rushed to amend the mining law, but they still fall short of implementing regulations to address the environmental and climate impacts of these extractive activities. The country has submitted only two National Communications on Climate Change to the United Nations—the last one in 2017, using data from 2010—while the National Academy of Sciences has produced two independent climate reports to fill the information gap. In the most recent report, presented in December 2025, they highlight the effect of deforestation associated with illegal mining, emphasizing the importance of considering how this type of environmental degradation may be influencing the impact of climate change on disease risk in other parts of the country.

A New Mosquito Vector

A study co-authored by Venezuelan biologist María Eugenia Grillet documented the presence of the mosquito Nyssorhynchus rondoniensis—a species of the genus Anopheles recently described in western Brazil—for the first time in Venezuela. The study was based on field samples collected between 2017 and 2023.

This finding occurred in the municipality of Sifontes, where Gold Reserve has its concession. In 2023, the municipality recorded 43,064 malaria cases, accounting for one-third of the national total.

The data fits into a previously documented environmental pattern, where mining activity in southern Venezuela is associated with hotspots of malaria transmission. Unlike deforestation driven by livestock farming, road construction, or planting, deforestation associated with mining produces artificial pits and lagoons, as well as warmer microclimates. These conditions are ideal for the proliferation of mosquito vectors.

Grillet told The Mix that Nyssorhynchus rondoniensis use mining pits more frequently to lay their eggs and are more resistant to sunlight than other vectors, “all of which are conditions created by mining in southern Venezuela.”

Researchers found a higher number of infections in older mines with established systems for continuous gold extraction, Grillet added.

Her team identified two critical transmission points in Sifontes, which for several consecutive years accounted for over 60% of regional and national malaria cases.

The expert urged the need for ecological restoration— after stopping the destructive mining practices.

‘A Purely Mercantilist Law’

Alejandro Álvarez Iragorry, director of the NGO Clima21 and a signatory to the statement decrying the new law, said loopholes render the law unconstitutional, as it fails to respect environmental rights enshrined in the Venezuelan Constitution.

Iragorry also pointed out language problems: “indigenous habitats” instead of “territories,” for instance, and the fact that environmental impact studies are mentioned, but not listed as requirements for mining approvals. “It is a purely mercantilist law,” he told The Mix.

Another member of SOS Orinoco who lives in southern Venezuela—and who requested anonymity for safety reasons—warns the mining law heightens risks beyond Venezuela. “It will attract not only new miners but also producers, who will bring their gold from Colombia and Brazil to have it legalized.”

For now, profits are already being reported. Gold Reserve’s stock price tripled between December 2025 and June 2026, the stock climbing alongside political developments like Maduro’s removal and the easing of U.S. sanctions.The Mix sent Gold Reserve questions about Sifontes’ armed-group control, conflict-gold risks, lack of Indigenous consultation, and the region’s malaria burden, but did not receive a response in time for publication.