Enter the Gold Mafia’s headquarters in Dubai, preferred destination of the world’s dirty gold. As the rival mafia gangs compete to launder money for the I-Unit’s undercover team, we learn why gold is the perfect vessel to hide and move criminal wealth.

One of Zimbabwe’s top diplomats, Ambassador Uebert Angel, is brokering a meeting between undercover reporters and President Emmerson Mnangagwa. This meeting will secure the deal to launder $1.2 billion of dirty cash through gold and investments in Zimbabwe. But first, the Ambassador needs to be paid.

Gold Mafia, a four-part series by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit looks at how society’s obsession with gold underwrites a global shadow economy. Investigators obtain the blueprints of money laundering operations that service southern Africa’s economic and political elite. And the investigation leads to the highest offices of state.