London gold market authority sued for certifying gold from Barrick’s deadly Tanzanian mine
UK lawyers acting on behalf of Tanzanian human rights victims today announced they were suing the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) for wrongfully certifying gold from Barrick’s deadly North Mara gold mine in Tanzania as being ‘responsibly sourced’. The legal claim has been issued by family members of two young men shot and killed by security forces at the mine in 2019.
The ground-breaking legal case, filed by law firm Leigh Day, thrusts into the spotlight industry certification schemes which claim to maintain environmental and human rights standards. Such schemes have been multiplying as businesses seek to promote their environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials, often with little public oversight ...
The legal action issued at the High Court is the first time in the UK that human rights claimants have sued an industry certification body for an alleged breach of a duty of care owed to them. In this case, the claimants allege that the LBMA’s failure to follow its own rules to stop the trade in tainted gold caused their devastating loss ...
The LBMA has the power to suspend or remove gold refiners from its approved ‘Good Delivery’ list, thereby excluding them from London’s globally dominant gold market. The LBMA says refiners on its list must meet its Responsible Gold Guidance, which requires accredited refiners to halt any sourcing of gold from mines where there are known serious human rights abuses or if there are founded suspicions that such abuses are occurring ...
RAID said it had repeatedly raised concerns directly with the LBMA about the human rights abuses, including in complaints and formal submissions in 2019, 2020 and in 2022, and urged the LBMA to act to stop tainted gold entering the supply chain. Although the LBMA opened a formal ‘Incident Review Process’ in 2019 to look into the human rights issues, it took no action to halt the trade.