In the quieter days between Christmas and the New Year, it's not unheard of for the 24-hours news cycle to face a lull when it comes to finding interesting topics to write about, so I probably shouldn't have been surprised when I came across an article on Bloomberg titled, "Dubai Can't Shake Off the Stain of Smuggled African Gold", which references interviews with non-specified government officials across Africa, who are "desperate to recoup lost revenue" from an "illicit network" where "tons of their gold goes missing in Dubai every year." In fact, the only two African ministers named and quoted in the article were Congolese Finance Minister, Nicolas Kazadi and Nigerian Mines Minister, Olamilekan Adegbite, the latter of which went on the record to state, "It's a huge loss… most European countries will ask you for your certificates of export from the country of origin. If you do not have that, the gold is confiscated and returned back to source. But, you see, in Dubai they look the other way."