US Contractors Linked to Illicit Amazon Mining Operations

White Solder, a Brazilian tin-producing company, has been accused of acquiring cassiterite illegally mined in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory. The company supplied hundreds of metric tons of tin to U.S.-based companies with Department of Defense contracts.

A Repórter Brasil investigation found that White Solder supplied at least 525 metric tons of tin to Indium Corporation between May 2023 and August 2025. Indium in turn supplied solder to Raytheon, a major U.S. defense contractor that manufactures military technologies.

White Solder also supplied at least 2,400 metric tons of tin to Nathan Trotter, a U.S. manufacturer of tin and solder alloys between 2021 and 2025. In 2024, the Department of Defense awarded Nathan Trotter a $19 million contract to build a tin smelting, refining and recycling facility in Pennsylvania.

Prosecutors allege that White Solder paid 166 million Brazilian reais ($32.5 million) to Coopertin, a tin producer cooperative, which was accused of disguising the origin of more than 525 tons of cassiterite illegally extracted from Yanomami territory between 2021 and 2022.

Indium Corporation stated that White Solder met the criteria of the Responsible Minerals Initiative when it supplied the company with the metal. However, Repórter Brasil published a report alleging that while White Solder claimed to have purchased more than 2,300 metric tons of cassiterite from two authorized areas in Rondônia between 2020 and 2025, there was no evidence of such mining activity.