UAE remains ‘main destination’ for gold smuggled out of Sudan and other war zones

The United Arab Emirates remains the key trading hub for smuggled gold and conflict gold, a new report from Switzerland’s Swissaid foundation has found. Despite the introduction in 2023 of legislation intended to curb illegal flows, the UAE, which is now the world’s second largest gold trading hub after Switzerland, imported at least 591 tonnes of illicit gold into the country in 2024. Illicit gold refers to that which was either smuggled to the UAE - most often to the gold markets of Dubai, the second largest Emirate - without being able to be traced, or that comes from countries at war, including Yemen, Sudan and Russia. The UAE remains by far the main destination for gold linked to armed conflicts in Africa, according to Swissaid. It also continues to be a major destination for gold exports from countries subject to international sanctions. “The findings of this study are deeply concerning. They show that the United Arab Emirates remains a hub for smuggled and conflict gold,” said Marc Ummel, head of Swissaid’s commodities unit and co-author of the study. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters In 2024, the UAE imported at least 174.5 tonnes of gold from Russia (directly and indirectly via Armenia), Yemen and Sudan (directly and indirectly), Swissaid found. The entire volume from these three countries can, the organisation said, “be considered as conflict gold”. Gold and war The UAE has been directly involved in both the wars in Yemen and Sudan, where it is the patron of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group widely determined to have committed genocide in different parts of Darfur. Abu Dhabi denies the charges, saying its involvement in Sudan is purely humanitarian. Alongside access to agricultural farmland, mercenaries and the Red Sea, gold is seen as one of the primary drivers for the UAE’s interest in Sudan and Africa as a whole. The family of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF chief better known as Hemedti, profits from gold mines in Darfur, the vast western region of Sudan under its control. The RSF’s own gold trading company, al-Junaid, accumulated considerable wealth by smuggling gold from areas of Sudan under its control into Dubai. Gold also comes out of territory controlled by the RSF’s enemy, the Sudanese Armed Forces - the two sides have been at war since April 2023 - and while it crosses the border into Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad, Libya and South Sudan, it is then almost always officially exported to the UAE. The same is true for many other African countries. More than 95 percent of the gold from Sudan, Niger, the Central African Republic, Zimbabwe, Libya, Togo, and Cameroon declared as imports in partner countries was imported into the UAE. Lucrative business Gold mines and gold producing areas have been drawn into Sudan’s war, including on the border with Egypt, where the Egyptian military has killed Sudanese miners in air strikes, and the border with Ethiopia, where gold mining concessions linked to the UAE sit alongside areas used by the Ethiopian army to support the RSF in Sudan. “The production of gold in Sudan is dominated - up to 85 or 90 percent - by artisanal miners,” Suliman Baldo, a Sudanese expert on the gold trade, told MEE earlier this year. 'The final destination for the gold is still the UAE, especially the gold market in Dubai' - Sudanese gold trader “Therefore, the gold is bought by traders and the export and smuggling of gold is mostly done by private individuals,” he said. “These individuals are wholesale traders who are able to buy the gold from the artisanal miners and smuggle it to the United Arab Emirates.” These individuals can - like Sudan’s armed groups - profit enormously from their trade. One Sudanese trader and refiner in River Nile state told MEE that he makes up to $150,000 per month from extracting one to two kilograms of gold per month. He pockets this after paying for expenses including workers, fuel, accommodation and the mercury needed by artisanal miners to collect gold. “Both in RSF and SAF-controlled territory, hundreds of thousands of artisans are working in gold extraction and the majority of it is being smuggled out of the country,” he said. “The miners in RSF-controlled areas are smuggling the gold through South Sudan, Chad, CAR, Ethiopia or Kenya, while those in SAF-controlled areas are smuggling the gold mainly to Egypt.” “The final destination for the gold is still the UAE, especially the gold market in Dubai.” This gold passes through many brokers and mediators, the source said. Dubai, the gold bridge The UAE’s position as the second largest gold trading hub is primarily down to Dubai, whose geographic location between Africa’s mines and Asia’s demand centres, tax-free zone structure and regulated quality standard has given “international buyers confidence”, according to a market based in the Emirate. The UAE acts, then, as the bridge between gold-producing and gold-consuming countries, with more than 2,500 tonnes of smuggled gold with a total value of over $115bn leaving Africa for the Emirates between 2012 and 2022. Gold smuggled out of Africa and officially imported into the UAE amounted to 413 tonnes in 2024, Swissaid said. UAE-backed Chinese company acquires stake in Ethiopian gold mine near Sudan war zone Read More » In 2024 and 2025, more than half of gold imports into the UAE came from African countries, and around 70 percent of the gold extracted in Africa was shipped to the UAE in 2024. According to a previous report from Swissaid, the UAE was also the main destination for smuggled African gold in 2022, taking in 405 tonnes. Responding to that report, a UAE official said that the country had taken significant steps to address concerns about gold smuggling and implemented new regulations on gold and other precious metals. Swissaid’s latest investigation, which used data from 2021 to 2025 and interviewed over 150 stakeholders, found that the “due diligence requirements for gold refineries, which came into force in 2023 in the UAE, have failed to stem the inflow of smuggled African gold into the country. On the contrary, the figures even point to a slight increase in these flows.” Swissaid said the findings are important to the Swiss industry, as it is the main importer of gold from the UAE. Switzerland is also the world’s largest gold trading hub.