New mining law amendment ‘won’t touch’ illegal kingpins: Benchmarks
The Benchmarks Foundation has raised concerns that the General Mining Laws Amendment Bill will not target the kingpins behind illegal mining syndicates.
The government is proposing sweeping changes to close loopholes in mining laws with harsher penalties for illegal mining operations.
The Bill will make illicit mining and related activities criminal offences, with fines of up to R100 million and jail terms of up to 30 years.
Benchmarks Foundation Lead Researcher and activist David van Wyk says despite the changes, those funding the syndicates will not be brought to book.
“It’s going to be very, very difficult to target the actual syndicates because I’ve not seen any efforts to identify who those syndicates are, where the minerals go, and for me, this is the problem.”
“So the guys who they want to arrest are not really the people that we should be looking for. We should be looking for the people in Sandton who are behind the syndicates, we should be looking for the people, the big wigs basically, so to speak, that are behind it.”
He adds, “If you look at the recent commissions of inquiry into corruption and so on, that is where we should be looking for the kingpins of these guys.”