Blog

Just hours after war broke out in the Middle East last month, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned the Security Council that the fighting risked “igniting a chain of events that no one can control in the most volatile region of the world.”

With U.S. sanctions lifted, international mining companies are poised to dive back into the vast reserves of Venezuelan gold buried beneath the country’s lush southern jungles. 

But it’s unclear how they plan to deal with the armed groups that run the mines, and experts warn that it will be difficult to eradicate them without triggering violence. 

Following nationalization 15 years ago, Venezuela’s gold sector has become rife with environmental and human rights abuses under the watch of a mix of local criminal gangs and Colombian guerillas who run the trade. Many international brokers won’t touch gold from Venezuela, with much of it now smuggled out of the country and rebranded with a different origin.

But after capturing former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro earlier this year, the U.S. has lifted sanctions to allow gold imports, and the current Venezuelan government is eager to capitalize on the opportunity. A new mining bill vowing to clamp down on illegal mining and clean-up the sector has passed its initial vote in Venezuela’s legislature.

Washington has said that any gold imports will have to “meet standards of U.S. law,” and that companies will be required to provide “supply chain due diligence plans to determine the chain of custody of the gold.” 

Experts warn this will be difficult as long as militias remain in control of the mines.

Currently, the supply chain is a “black hole” of “blood gold laundering” where illegal and legal gold sources intermingle, said Cristina Burelli, an analyst with the Venezuelan nongovernmental organization SOS Orinoco. 

“A very complex, difficult job of dismantling the criminal structure that exists there has to happen first,” she said. 

Bram Ebus, a researcher with the U.S.-based non-profit International Crisis Group, said there is no way to enter the sector without “confronting armed actors willing to use local populations as human shields, or extort foreign corporations.” 

For any foreign companies involved, this means that “financing terrorist organizations becomes a plausible risk.”

The process is nevertheless moving at what one U.S. official has dubbed “Trump speed,” with global commodities trader Trafigura having already signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Venezuela’s state-owned gold mining company, CVG Minerven, at the start of the month. 

The deal was inked four days before Washington issued General License 51, which officially unblocked the gold trade.

“This agreement complies with a licence issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Department of the Treasury,” Trafigura said in an emailed response to questions from OCCRP. 

When asked about how the company would make sure the gold they trade was not tainted by conflict or rights abuses, they said: “We are working with our counterparty jointly to implement a responsible sourcing programme.”

A person familiar with the matter, who withheld their name as they were not authorized to speak to the media, told OCCRP Trafigura would not have signed on without already having received the required licenses from OFAC. 

They added that Trafigura needs “assurances” that any gold imports will be free from human rights and labor violations, because U.S. customs will be “very strict” on what they let through.

Meanwhile, a person close to another major mining company, Gold Reserve, told OCCRP that the firm is starting negotiations with the Venezuelan government to reclaim the operations it lost to nationalization. 

The individual, who was not authorized to speak to journalists, said the major challenge to returning will be securing the blessing of leaders of the local armed groups: “This is a project of national interest [and] without them, it’s going to be difficult.” 

Gold Reserve did not respond to requests to comment, though its CEO Paul Rivett previously told Bloomberg that the company plans to quickly make efforts to reclaim gold and copper concessions that were seized by the Venezuelan state.

The London Bullion Market Association, a gold certification agency, said it is “closely monitoring the updates in relation to sanctions on Venezuelan gold” and did not comment directly on the ethical issues around the supply chain. 

A spokesperson for Venezuela’s government did not respond to a request for comment before publication. The office of U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

Critical Minerals

Speaking from Caracas on March 4, Burgum hailed the  unblocking of sanctions on Venezuela’s  gold as a strategic necessity to break China’s global monopoly on critical minerals. 

But no one has explained how the Venezuelan government plans to regain control of the Orinoco Mining Arc, a zone that was created by Maduro in 2016 for the extraction of gold, coltan, and diamond, and makes up 12 percent of the country’s territory. 

The draft Venezuelan law rebrands the mining zone as an investment opportunity, and calls for a new mining security force to dismantle illegal operations and combat illicit mining extraction.

But it avoids any mention of the armed gangs or guerrillas who control the territory.

In the last decade, local gangs, criminal syndicates, military units, and Colombian guerillas maneuvered for control of the mines, according to multiple reports, including one from the International Crisis Group. 

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has also documented serious human rights abuses in the region, including sexual exploitation and trafficking.

A former miner who worked in Venezuela’s gold belt, and who requested anonymity for security reasons, described a system of state complicity in corrupt, lawless fiefdoms that any foreign company will have to negotiate with to access the mines. 

He said that gold miners pay a 10 percent tax on daily profits from each mine to the boss of local criminal gangs known as ‘sindicatos.’ The boss then pays the government “its share and the government stays out of it,” the former miner said. 

The sindicatos organize light municipal work and prevent violence, the miner explained. He added that army and government officials receive a cut from gold sales, but do not police the mines. 

“If those systems — those sindicatos — didn’t exist, there would be robberies, kidnappings, chaos, fighting,” he said.

Going Over Old Ground 

The draft mining law being fast-tracked in Caracas allows for international arbitration to settle disputes — a large incentive for companies like Gold Reserve to return. 

Gold Reserve, initially a Canadian company that is now headquartered in Bermuda, started mining in Venezuela in the 1980s but was kicked out in 2011 when former President Hugo Chavez nationalized the mines, and declared all gold state property. The company then pursued the state for more than $1 billion in lost investments. 

Gold Reserve’s major area of exploitation in Venezuela covered the Brisas and Las Cristinas deposits, which hold an estimated 52 million gold ounces. Combined, the deposits make up the largest gold-mining project in South America, and the fourth‑largest globally, according to company documents.

In 2016, the company reached a partial agreement with Maduro’s government to resume operations, but the joint‑venture never materialized and Gold Reserve parted ways with Venezuela once again. 

But Washington’s moves to allow gold imports, along with Venezuela’s expected legislation, are opening the door for Gold Reserve and other companies anew. 

According to the person close to Gold Reserve who spoke to OCCRP, the negotiations to restart operations are “just beginning.”

In November 2017, financier Jeffrey Epstein wanted to know whether an assistant had found him any young women in Europe. “No one new this trip?” he asked in an email.

“The new one I like is in Paris,” came the reply from Julia Santos. “We are supposed to Skype again this evening … She is my new favorite as of now.”

In fact, the name “Julia Santos” was a pseudonym, an apparent reference to a character from the ‘90s soap opera All My Children. The email account was used by a group of female assistants Epstein had organized to recruit young women for his circle of models and potential sexual targets.

This is according to a woman who admits to being one of the recruiters: Svetlana Pozhidaeva, 42, a onetime Russian model who worked for Epstein for years until his death in 2019. Pozhidaeva spoke to OCCRP for hours over the course of three days of interviews this week, addressing reports in Russian media, including OCCRP’s partner Important Stories, that her father was connected to the intelligence apparatus.

That reporting — which Pozhidaeva denies — has attracted interest and fueled speculation on social media, in part because Pozhidaeva moved among the titans of American finance during her time with Epstein, even twice meeting an up-and-coming Elon Musk.

Speaking to OCCRP, Pozhidaeva painted a picture of constant abuse during her time with Epstein, saying that the financier bullied, dominated, and manipulated her. “I was struggling with insomnia, eating disorders,” she said. “I was like throwing up after every single meal.”

“I’m not denying that I was recruiting women,” Pozhidaeva said. “That’s the most embarrassing and shameful and most regretful thing that happened.” But she said she had trouble seeing beyond her abuse, which also took on a physical dimension: “[Epstein] started physically abusing me when I first visited him in Florida,” she said. “I did not know a single person in the U.S. … It was really far away from my family.”

Still, Pozhidaeva’s background, and her relationship with Epstein, is starkly different from that of many other women who became ensnared in his alleged sexual trafficking network, a recently released trove of emails from the U.S. Justice Department shows. The emails show the well-educated Pozhidaeva being treated as a valuable asset: Epstein organized her appearances at elite forums like the U.N. and Davos, introduced her to powerful people, and at one point paid her $8,333 per month.

Reporters from several outlets have recently unearthed evidence suggesting that Pozhidaeva’s father Yury Pozhidaev, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Russian military, is a career intelligence officer: In a December 2015 email, Pozhidaeva wrote Epstein that, on a trip to the United States, her father had regaled her boyfriend with stories of his “FSB pa[s]t.” Yury Pozhidaev’s most recent employment history — as a security specialist on strategic state projects — also points towards an intelligence career. And according to a leaked courier database, he has communicated with the FSB pension office.

The emails show that Pozhidaev’s father visited Epstein in his Palm Beach mansion with her mother, who wrote the financier a rapturous thank-you email in which she described him as the “Great Getsby (sic).” Ahead of their visit, the younger Pozhidaeva received over $237,000 in her bank account from Epstein’s offshore Butterfly Trust, the transaction marked “for the family.” (She maintains that this was a loan.)

No evidence has emerged that Epstein discussed any sensitive matters with Pozhidaeva’s father. But the Epstein files show that he pursued relationships with senior Russian officials.

For example, Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s long-serving UN ambassador until his death in 2017, was a friend and visitor to the financier’s Manhattan home, according to the Department of Justice files and Pozhidaeva. The files also show Epstein hosted the ambassador during a period when he headed UN Security Council meetings and mentored his son Maxim, helping him seek work on Wall Street.

And the files show that Epstein grew close to Sergey Belyakov, a former Russian deputy economic development minister and graduate of the FSB Academy. Belyakov ran the prestigious St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and at Epstein’s request wrote a letter of recommendation for renewal of Pozhidaeva’s U.S. visa, saying she helped plan the agenda.

That was an embellishment requested by Epstein, Pozhidaeva told OCCRP, noting she attended the forum but played no role in organizing it.

After Epstein’s death, Pozhidaeva said she spoke to the media several times on condition of anonymity. But when the Trump administration released 3.5 million documents in the so-called Epstein Files earlier this year, it failed to redact her name. (It has since done so at the request of her and others identifying as victims.)

That led her to go public in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, seeking control of the narrative about her. For that story, her father denied any connection to the FSB, offering to take a polygraph test to end speculation. (He did not respond to OCCRP’s requests for comment.)

In her interviews with OCCRP, Pozhidaeva flatly denied her father’s FSB ties, saying her email had been a reference to a misguided attempt to impress her boyfriend. She attributed her father’s career moves to his expertise in the Persian language and said that he only received a regular military pension.

Turning to her life with Epstein, Pozhidaeva explained that she had been charmed after a chance meeting with him in late 2007 or early 2008, was hired by his modeling agency, and became his assistant a few years later. Over the following decade, she said, she stayed on his now-infamous island, met foreign leaders at his Paris home, and scoped out a palace in Morocco that he ultimately did not buy. But she also said Epstein objectified her, pressured her to lose weight, and manipulated her to such an extent that she misled even her parents.

“They thought I had the best job in the world, that I have the best life,” she said. “I would send them pictures with Bill Gates, and [former Norwegian diplomat] Terje Rød-Larsen, all the famous people I had pictures with, and say I’m in meetings with all those people. But I wasn’t really in the meetings. I was waiting behind closed doors and taking the plates out when the meeting was over.”

“He told me that he would teach me real business,” Pozhidaeva said of Epstein. “And as soon as I started asking: Shall I start taking English communication classes, or maybe accent reduction classes, anything to improve professionally? He said, well, you should start learning how to do massage. And that was the only class he encouraged.”

Today, Pozhidaeva lives in the United States, works in finance, and has started a new life under a new name. OCCRP is not publishing her name and location at her request over concerns for her safety. She said she is in touch with many survivors and is working to build a library of resources for fellow Epstein victims.

An Elite Soviet Family

During the Soviet era, Pozhidaeva’s family counted among a privileged elite. Her maternal grandfather, Marcel Platonov, was a military surgeon and gynecologist who participated in the infamous Soviet operation that triggered the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. He was granted an apartment in the House on the Embankment, a Stalin-era building on the Moscow River infamous for hosting the cream of the Soviet elite.

Pozhidaeva’s parents, Yury and Irina, graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, whose alumni often served in the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, which is responsible for foreign intelligence, or as military attachés.

Her father was trained as a Persian-language military interpreter. In 1978, on the eve of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was sent to the country as part of an advisory corps.

Little else is known about his career with the Soviet military. Pozhidaev left the armed forces in the late 1990s and spent several years selling coffee and wine. But in December 2017, the retired lieutenant colonel started working for a subsidiary of Rostec, an anchor of Russia’s military-industrial complex. His work often took him to Tehran, where the company was helping install energy infrastructure.

The following year, Pozhidaev was named deputy head of security for the Iranian division of Russian Railways, which was working on a strategic transport corridor in the region. In 2020, Pozhidaev concurrently became deputy general director for security at Caspian Services, the main contractor for Russia’s transport ministry on the same project.

OCCRP described Pozhidaev’s biography to several experts on the Russian security services, who pointed out that such positions are typically reserved for formally retired security service officers who continue to report to their agency, a position known in Russian as “seconded personnel” (APS). Orders assigning such officers are signed by the FSB director.

“He is part of a total model of the post-Soviet FSB, in which they alternate between the private sector and serving state projects overseas, where their language skills and knowledge of the environment help serve the Russian state and its interests,” said Louise Shelley, an professor emerita at George Mason University in Virginia and longtime expert on Soviet and Russian affairs. “He fits a profile.”

Aside from Yury Pozhidaev’s employment history — and his daughter’s emailed reference to his FSB past — reporters from the Russian outlet Explainer found another tie to the agency. According to a leaked courier database, they reported, he sent several pieces of correspondence to the pension department of the FSB Directorate for Moscow and the Moscow Region in 2022.

Asked about this, Pozhidaeva said her father had to communicate with pension authorities to claim a retirement benefit: yearly visits to sanatoriums. She did not explain why he was writing to an FSB office, rather than to the defense ministry. He did not respond to emailed questions from OCCRP.

Pozhidaeva’s own background drew the attention of Russian media. Her resume, found in the files, shows that she received her undergraduate and Masters degrees from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations, an elite springboard for careers in diplomacy and intelligence. She learned multiple foreign languages and interned at the Russian foreign ministry, the oil giant Lukoil, and Russian investment firms.

Despite this privileged background, she stressed in her interview with OCCRP that she had long felt insecure about her family’s financial status as compared to wealthier classmates, that she grew up in a building without an elevator, and that she never owned a car while in college.

In her mid-20s, Pozhidaeva pivoted to a career as a runway model. She was introduced to Epstein in Paris and was brought to the United States by the modeling agency MC2 Model Management, funded by Epstein but run by a disgraced associate.

Afterwards, Pozhidaeva’s visa was sponsored directly by an Epstein foundation. Her attorney, Brad Edwards, noted that Epstein routinely recruited foreign models who wanted to stay in the U.S. and held their visa status over their heads to trap them in his network.

He also used other coercive tactics, Edwards said. “If [the women] had any medical issues, [Epstein] made sure they went to his doctors. Those doctors provided the records to him, not even to the women,” Edwards said.

But Pozhidaeva’s story is complicated by the copious evidence in the Epstein Files that she actively recruited young women for the financier.

The emails show her actively helping women in Ukraine and elsewhere get passports or Schengen visas. “That’s the Kiev contact I like a lot, very sweet and might be naughty too,” she wrote in one email about a prospect.

Another email shows her sending a nude photo of a candidate to Epstein. In others, she disparages potential candidates: “Bad skin, huge boobs, said [she was] 24yo,” she wrote about one young woman.

Ali Hopper, a counter-trafficking expert and policy advocate who frequently testifies before federal and state legislatures in the United States, says that people these situations often reside in a gray area between being a victim and victimizer.

“When a victim is pulled into a trafficking operation and later takes on a role recruiting, managing, or profiting off other victims, that shift matters,” she said. “You can hold two truths at once: they were victimized, and they later contributed to the victimization of others.”

Almost seven years after Epstein’s controversial death in a Manhattan jail cell, Pozhidaeva said he still haunts her.

“Sometimes I even feel like he’s alive, you know, I still have nightmares he’s alive,” she said.

Does she think he hanged himself with bedsheets? Pozhidaeva is unsure.

“It’s hard to imagine him being so brave to take his life. Because it’s not like he had a gun and shot himself or took a pill and fell asleep,” Pozhidaeva said. “It’s a very wild way of taking his life.”

Zack Kopplin contributed reporting.

Hours after being sworn in as Nepal’s new prime minister on Friday, Balendra Shah, a 35-year-old rapper and structural engineer, announced that his government would pursue criminal charges against the country’s former leadership for their role in a deadly crackdown on youth-led anti-corruption protests last year.

The bold move, announced Friday following the first meeting of the newly formed cabinet, signals a seismic shift in the Himalayan nation’s political landscape. Shah’s Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) swept into power in a landslide election following the so-called “Gen-Z” protests that toppled the political establishment.

Sworn in by President Ramchandra Paudel at the presidential palace amid the chanting of Buddhist monks and Vedic recitations by 108 young Hindu priests, Shah takes office with a sweeping mandate for accountability. In a staggering victory, he defeated the former prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli, by nearly 50,000 votes in Jhapa-5.

Now, Shah’s government is turning its sights directly on Oli and his top deputies.

The new cabinet’s first official act was a commitment to fully implement the findings of a high-level state commission which investigated the violent suppression of the September 2025 uprisings.

According to the report seen by OCCRP, the commission recommended criminal prosecution against Oli, former Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak, and former Inspector General of Police Chandra Kuber Khapung.

Sasmit Pokharel, the new Minister for Education, Science, and Technology and the government’s newly appointed spokesperson, told journalists that relevant agencies have been directed to “immediately implement” the commission’s recommendations. He added that a special study committee will be formed to specifically address the disciplinary actions of the security agencies.

The September 2025 protests, which initially began as a peaceful youth movement opposing the government’s sweeping ban on 26 social media platforms, left 76 people dead and more than 2,500 injured.

The commission’s report accuses the former leaders of “extreme reckless negligence.” It found that they acted as “mere spectators” during a continuous four-hour clash outside the Federal Parliament on Sept. 8, allegedly failing to order a cease-fire or implement harm-minimization measures as security forces used indiscriminate, lethal force against the crowds.

If convicted of criminal negligence resulting in mass casualties, the former prime minister and his top security officials could face three to 10 years in prison and fines of up to 100,000 rupees.

The crisis ultimately spiraled into nationwide chaos on Sept. 9. While the commission acknowledged it could not fully investigate the sheer scale of the ensuing riots, it noted that the movement was quickly co-opted by organized criminal elements. Petroleum products were used to set fire to the Parliament, the Supreme Court, and other government buildings.

The report offered a scathing assessment of the country’s security and intelligence apparatus, blasting the National Investigation Department for failing to track the digital planning of the riots on platforms like Discord. Noting that security forces “fired blindly” due to a lack of institutional guidelines, the commission outlined an urgent blueprint for police reform, mandating the immediate implementation of strict rules of engagement and scenario-based training.

For Shah and his young cabinet the commitment to the report is part of a broader anti-corruption crusade. The RSP campaigned on a promise to investigate the assets of senior officials and reopen corruption scandals dating back to the restoration of democracy in 1990.

“If anyone asks you for a bribe, tell the police,” Sudhan Gurung, Minister for Home Affairs told journalists and government officials on Friday after assuming his new role. “There will be zero tolerance for corruption.”