Key Points
— A New York Times investigation published Sunday by Colombian photojournalist Federico Ríos documented a Clan del Golfo gold mine operating not just adjacent to but partly inside the Battalion Rifles 31 Colombian army base in Caucasia, Antioquia. Drone footage showed extraction reaching to roughly 137 meters from the base commander’s private pool. The mine, La Mandinga, sits on a 2,000-hectare property under control of Colombia’s Special Assets Society (SAE) following a domain extinction process.
— Colombia’s army Seventh Division has now formally acknowledged the presence of between 2,000 and 2,500 illegal miners on the property bordering the battalion. Battalion commander Colonel Daniel Echeverry initially denied any extraction was occurring inside the base; after Ríos showed him the drone footage, he acknowledged “this is inside the base” and ordered an immediate eviction operation. Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez Suárez ordered a full investigation Sunday, including review of possible institutional omission or criminal complicity.
— The Times investigation also alleged that gold from La Mandinga reached the United States Mint through laundering chains — despite US legal restrictions limiting Mint purchases to gold extracted in US territory. The Clan del Golfo charges miners a tax for the right to extract, generating revenue that finances weapons, territorial control, and the cartel’s broader operations across Colombia.
The Clan del Golfo gold mine documented this weekend by The New York Times — operating at the perimeter and partly inside an active Colombian army base — exposes a level of criminal-state co-existence that even Colombian security analysts had not publicly confirmed.
A New York Times investigation by Manizales-born photojournalist Federico Ríos has documented a Clan del Golfo gold mine operating partly inside an active Colombian army battalion. The Rio Times, the Latin American financial news outlet, reports that La Mandinga — a 2,000-hectare property in Caucasia, Antioquia, that is technically under Colombian state control following a criminal asset extinction process — has been functioning as an industrial-scale illegal mining operation with extraction reaching roughly 137 meters from the private pool of the base commander, Colonel Daniel Echeverry.
The Colombian army’s Seventh Division has now publicly acknowledged the presence of between 2,000 and 2,500 illegal miners working the property adjacent to and partly within the perimeter of Battalion Rifles 31. Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez Suárez ordered a full investigation Sunday, explicitly stating that the inquiry will examine institutional omission, irregularities in the custody of military land, and possible criminal complicity by uniformed personnel.
How the Clan del Golfo Gold Mine Was Confirmed
The verification sequence is the most damning part of the Times piece. Ríos initially encountered a worker at the site who told him the mine had expanded onto military land. The worker reportedly told the photojournalist: “If you want, fly the drone and look.” The drone footage captured industrial machinery, high-pressure hoses, generators, and devastated extraction zones at coordinates that aligned with the perimeter of Battalion Rifles 31.
When Ríos shared the images with the army, Colonel Echeverry initially denied that mining was occurring within the base. After a joint inspection, the noise of the generators and the visible operating machinery left no doubt. According to the Times account, Echeverry then said, “this is inside the base,” and ordered the soldiers to evict the miners.
The eviction was not peaceful. Some miners insulted the soldiers and refused to stop work; others threatened violence. According to the Times reporting, one miner threw gasoline toward the group of soldiers and journalists shouting “we’ll all burn together.” Soldiers eventually destroyed the engines and hoses by setting them on fire.
The Casa de la Moneda Allegation
The most internationally significant element of the investigation is the supply chain trace. According to the Times reporting, gold extracted at La Mandinga reached the US Mint through certification chains that obscured its Colombian origin — despite US legal restrictions limiting Mint gold purchases to metal extracted within US territory.
The mechanism, as described in the report, is gold laundering. Foreign-extracted gold — much of it illegally mined in countries including Colombia — is processed through intermediaries that issue domestic-origin certifications before resale to entities including the US Mint. The Times piece characterizes the arrangement as “the last link in a chain that launders foreign gold, much of it extracted illegally.”
If confirmed by US Treasury or congressional investigation, the chain implicates a US federal entity in the financial sustenance of the Clan del Golfo. That has potential implications for both US-Colombia security cooperation and the Trump administration’s stated posture on Colombian cartel pressure under the broader Latin America security framework.
Why This Matters Beyond the Single Mine
Illegal mining has overtaken cocaine in several Colombian regions as the dominant criminal economy. The Clan del Golfo, Colombia’s largest active criminal organization since the 2018 fragmentation of the FARC, runs taxation systems on illegal mines across Bajo Cauca, Chocó, and parts of the Pacific coast. La Mandinga is one node in a much larger architecture.
Gold prices crossing US$4,000 per ounce in late 2025 made these mines exponentially more profitable. Colombian gold exports rose 140.8 percent year-on-year in February 2026 alone, according to DANE data. Some unknown but material share of that growth reflects illegally-mined output reaching international markets through laundering channels exactly like the one the Times documented.
The Petro government’s “paz total” approach — pursuing negotiated settlements with armed groups including the Clan del Golfo — has lost political support precisely because of cases like this. Battlefield intelligence and ministerial denials no longer survive a single drone overflight by a competent journalist with international distribution.
What Comes Next
The defense ministry’s investigation will examine three questions. Whether soldiers at the base knew about the mining; whether commanders received payments or other benefits; and whether the chain of command up to Bogotá failed to act on prior intelligence.
Local sources told the Times the mine had been operating for months in plain view of the battalion’s roughly 800 personnel deployed specifically to combat the Clan del Golfo in the region.
The political pressure on Petro is significant. Vice President Francia Márquez, increasingly distanced from the administration, has publicly questioned Defense Minister Sánchez over the broader wave of violence.
The opposition has framed La Mandinga as the symbolic collapse of paz total. The Cauca attacks of the past 48 hours and the Mandinga revelation arrived in the same news cycle, compounding the impact.
For the next government — taking office on August 7, 2026 — the Clan del Golfo gold-mining economy will be one of the inherited security problems that no rural-development program can address quickly. Mining requires geology, capital, and labor concentrated in physical sites that the state in principle controls. The Mandinga case demonstrates how thin that control has become.