Payment of university fees for their children, trips to foreign locations and sex are just some of the ..ahem…incentives being offered to officials to

• issue lucrative sand mining permits

• issue export permits

• find and exploit loopholes in regulatory systems

• look the other way while illegal or extralegal* sand mining occurs

If you’ve been following this topic, you will know that not all sand is equal. Specific uses demand specific types of sand. You will also know these resources are non-renewable resources in human timescales especially considering the immense volumes we have been extracting.

Corruption is evident in some places in the production of not just construction aggregate (sand & gravel) but also specialist sands that fetch higher market prices. There are various types of specialist sands depending on the end-use. Golf bunkers, for example, require sand that can drain water and is free from organic content. The aesthetics matter too in this case. For other uses, it is the chemical content and properties that make the sands so valuable. Mineral sands that are used to produce pigments for paints and plastics or metal for the aerospace sector or those that are rare earth bearing composite minerals are all valuable sands.

It is clear that we require a lot more scrutiny into how these resources are produced and traded. We also need to strengthen mechanisms for compliance and enforcement. If you’d like to delve deeper into this topic, here are a couple of links to get you started:

1. The managing partner of a major mineral sand mining and export company and his associate were convicted and sentenced to prison for corruption along with a former Deputy Director of the Ministry of Environment and Forests by the Central Bureau of Investigation, India

2. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission arrested 34 people in connection with bribes meant as an inducement to approve or expedite approval for sand mining permits and to refrain from taking action against those illegally mining or transporting sand. 3 officials were found to have received sexual favours too.

*extralegal sand mining refers to cases where the miners hold a valid license but where the mining areas have often exceeded their permits by several orders of magnitude.