Watch: Gold Mafia – Episode 1 – The Laundry Service

Undercover reporters pose as gangsters with up to a billion dollars of black money that need to be cleaned. They gain remarkable access to members of Africa’s Gold Mafia and film closed door meetings with crime bosses. A senior African ambassador offers to launder $1.2 million using the cover of his diplomatic bag. Criminals offer lucrative deals to clean over $100 million through government gold export schemes. At the centre of it their operations is southern Africa’s biggest laundromat, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Gold Mafia, a four-part series by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit looks at how society’s obsession with gold underwrites a global shadow economy. The undercover team infiltrates the rival gangs that turn dirty cash into gold, which is then sold around the world. Through thousands of confidential documents and exclusive interviews with whistleblowers from within the criminal organisations, investigators obtain the blueprints of billion-dollar money laundering operations that service the political elite. And the investigation leads to the highest offices of southern Africa.