News24 | Death of two African miners could bring down referee of $1 trillion gold market

The industry body that sets the rules for the world’s biggest gold market faces an existential legal battle in a London courtroom next week, in a case that could have far-reaching implications for how the industry polices its supply chain.

The London Bullion Market Association is being sued by the families of two men who died at a Tanzanian gold mine in 2019. The start of the trial on Wednesday will cast a spotlight on the outsized role that the relatively small organisation plays in overseeing the $1-trillion-a-week gold market in London.

The LBMA says the claim has no merit, and is confident it will successfully defend it. But if the court orders it to pay out significant sums to the claimants, there’s a risk it could leave the industry body insolvent, according to people familiar with its thinking, who asked not to be identified discussing legal proceedings.

As a contingency for an adverse ruling, there have been internal discussions within the LBMA about setting up a successor body to maintain some core operations critical to the functioning of the bullion market, the people said, although no steps have been taken yet.

“LBMA disputes that it bears legal responsibility for these tragic deaths, and their profound human impact,” the organisation said in a statement. “The claim misconstrues LBMA’s role in the supply chain, and we deny that LBMA owed the duty of care alleged in these proceedings.”

That threat hanging over the LBMA is a cause for unease among traders and executives in the broader gold industry, who will be descending on the idyllic Italian resort town of Sorrento this weekend for the organisation’s annual conference.

Several insiders including traders, refiners and experts in responsible sourcing have told Bloomberg privately they expect the LBMA to prevail, but they’re also not ruling out the possibility that the case could have seismic consequences for the underlying gold market in London and beyond.

London’s role as the standard-setter for the global gold market has evolved over centuries, starting in 1750 with the Bank of England’s creation of the Good Delivery List, which ensured bullion was of a consistent purity as it began pouring in from all corners of the globe.

The LBMA took responsibility for that list when it was founded in 1987, and in recent years it’s expanded its scope by demanding refiners follow responsible-sourcing rules when procuring their gold.

The court case will test whether the association can be held partly accountable for the men’s deaths at North Mara in Tanzania, given that some of the mine’s output was sold to one of those Good Delivery List refiners.

“The LBMA holds itself out as the ‘global authority for precious metals’ and acts as a quasi-regulator of the global gold market,” lawyers for Leigh Day, the firm bringing the claim, said in a statement. The alleged human rights abuses at the mine could be avoided if the association’s rules were “properly and fearlessly applied,” they said.

The claimants allege that one man, 23, was fatally shot after police dispersed a group of small-scale miners who were trespassing on the site in July 2019, while another, also 23, was shot in the back as he fled police in December that year.

The Tanzanian police didn’t respond to a request for comment, while Barrick Mining, the majority owner of North Mara, declined to comment. In an earlier statement, the miner said that it was proud of its human rights record around the world, and that it did not direct or control the Tanzanian police.

Acacia Mining - in which Barrick had a majority stake and then fully acquired in 2019 - and its Tanzanian operating subsidiary have previously faced lawsuits over alleged killings and injuries involving police and security forces at the site. A UK case brought by Tanzanian villagers represented by Leigh Day was settled in 2015 without an admission of liability.

A ruling that effectively made the LBMA responsible for abuses at mines supplying accredited refiners would make its Good Delivery system unworkable, the people familiar with the organisation’s thinking said.

The association lacks the resources to monitor mines around the world directly, the people said, and it could be forced to retreat from enforcing responsible-sourcing standards altogether if the ruling imposed a broad duty of care.

Any successor would have to pay to recover intellectual property underpinning the LBMA’s market functions, including its Good Delivery List of refiners, the people said.

“The claimants do not contend that the LBMA’s system is unworkable,” Leigh Day said. Instead, the LBMA’s system was “rendered meaningless by conflicts of interest and negligence,” they said.

A ruling against the LBMA could also open the door to similar claims elsewhere, potentially including the London Metal Exchange, which has a similar system requiring producers of listed brands to meet responsible-sourcing standards. The Good Delivery List is also relied on by market participants and futures exchanges like the US-based CME Group Inc., making accreditation almost a necessity for many of the biggest refiners.

The case creates particular jeopardy for the LBMA because its finances are modest compared to the scale of the market it oversees. And despite counting some of the world’s largest banks among its members, none of them are obliged to backstop it financially.

Its latest accounts show the organisation had about £1.4 million (R32 million) of reserves at the end of 2025. It disclosed that it could face £3 million of the claimants’ legal costs if it loses the North Mara case, before accounting for any damages awarded to the families.

Replacing the LBMA with another system to enforce responsible-sourcing standards “wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem” of ensuring gold is responsibly sourced, said Joanne Lebert, executive director of Canadian non-profit organisation IMPACT. “I think it might actually set us back.”

‘Stronger action’

Leigh Day argues that the LBMA should have taken stronger action after reports of alleged violence at the North Mara site became public. RAID, a corporate watchdog, published a number of reports from 2014 onwards alleging that shootings, torture and severe beatings were carried out by Tanzanian police officers who provided security at the mine.

MMTC-PAMP India, a Good Delivery List refiner, continued processing gold from North Mara after some of those allegations emerged. The claimants’ lawyers say the LBMA should have suspended MMTC-PAMP from the Good Delivery List, or threatened to do so, if it did not stop sourcing gold from the mine. They argue that the threat of losing access to Good Delivery List refiners could have forced changes at the site and prevented the deaths of the two miners.

“At the moment these industry certification schemes are weak, can’t be trusted, and far too often put a clean label on tainted commodities, in this case tainted gold,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, executive director at RAID. “If a scheme like this can’t be held to account when it gets it wrong, it’s clear legislation will be required.”

MMTC-PAMP said it rigorously follows the LBMA responsible sourcing rules, and is audited annually for its compliance by an independent third party.

In its defence of the case, the LBMA will argue that responsibility for alleged violence rests with those who perpetrated it, and that it neither certifies nor controls mines, has no personnel in Tanzania and cannot police the conduct of police or mine security.