Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Swiss gold refiner leaves umbrella group after row

Gold
Valcambi will leave the Swiss Association of Precious Metals Manufacturers and Traders follwoing a disagreement. Keystone / Martin Ruetschi

Gold refiner Valcambi is no longer part of the Swiss Association of Precious Metals Manufacturers and Traders (ASFCMP). Following disagreements, the Ticino group has in fact left the umbrella organization with immediate effect.

At the end of discussions, “it appeared that Valcambi and the ASFCMP had irreconcilable differences and that the continuation of their collaboration proved unthinkable,” the association said in a press release on Friday. The company therefore presented its resignation on October 26, which the association took note of.

“Valcambi disagrees with the position of some ASFCMP board members to exclude certain countries of origin, which is also an implicit confirmation of the failure to perform due diligence in depending on the inherent risks”, indicates the company.

“The ASFCMP has adopted the position of the board of directors as the official position of the association, which is not in line with other institutions such as the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association, editor’s note) and the objective of OECD guidelines”, Valcambi further accuses.

At the beginning of September, the press revealed documents indicating that contrary to its public commitments, the Ticino company had continued after 2019 to import gold from the Kaloti company, based in Dubai. The latter is at the heart of money laundering and gold trade from conflict zones.

Valcambi, the world’s leading gold refiner, is headquartered in the municipality of Balerna in Ticino. Founded in 1978, the ASFCMP brings together 14 companies active in the refining of precious metals. A code of conduct defines standards, particularly in terms of business ethics.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Daily news

Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox.

Daily

The SBC Privacy Policy provides additional information on how your data is processed.


News

The meeting will be held on June 15 and 16 at the five-star Bürgenstock hotel above Lake Lucerne in central Switzerland.

More

Ukraine peace talks: 50 countries have confirmed participation

This content was published on To date, 50 countries out 160 invited delegations have confirmed they will attend the Ukraine peace conference, held in central Switzerland in mid-June, according to Swiss public radio, RTS.

Read more: Ukraine peace talks: 50 countries have confirmed participation

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR