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This hard-hitting, exclusively researched depiction of a key area of economic policy takes us both to the glittering world of gold refining and to the world´s worst mining regions. Mark Pieth illuminates the historical roots of the gold trade before turning his attention to today´s supply chains, from mines to refineries and clandestine intermediaries to consumers: central banks, investors, jewellers and watchmakers. He reveals some of the horrific problems caused by gold mining that still receive little attention due to a lack of binding regulations: severe environmental destruction, forced labour and human trafficking, land grabbing, stolen assets and money laundering. The author manages to make these complex topics easy to understand and hard to ignore.

Switzerland is not only a major power in the financial sector and commodity market - whose scandalous workings were revealed by the Swiss NGO Berne Declaration (now Public Eye) in the book Rohstoff, also published by Salis. Switzerland is also a leader in global gold trading. But while the EU, for example, has recently turned existing OECD guidelines into binding law, Switzerland continues to rely on voluntary self-regulation.

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Pieth, Mark
Mark Pieth, born in 1953, has been Professor of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedural Law and Criminology at the University of Basel since 1993. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex in the UK. He is the founder and President of the Basel Institute on Governance and is known for his pioneering role in initiatives to combat corruption and money laundering. From 1990 to 2013 he was President of the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions and in 2004 he was a member of the Volcker Commission charged with investigating the UN Oil for Food Scandal. In 2016, Pieth was a member of an expert panel set up by the Panamanian government to improve the transparency of the country´s financial and legal systems, from which he withdrew together with the head of the panel, Joseph E. Stiglitz, in protest against work restrictions.

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