Unchecked smuggling and endemic fraud gives the lie to modest official valuations of Burma’s multi-billion dollar annual jade trade, a new report by Global Witness claims. Through information gathered over the course of a one-year investigation, the London-based resource economics watchdog has estimated 2014 trade in Burma’s most profitable natural resource to be worth US$31 billion. That would be three times higher than the official figure of $12.3 billion in jade sold to China, the destiny for almost all of Burma’s unearthed jade. To put these astronomical figures into context, natural gas generated export revenues of $4.2 billion for Burma in 2014. Unlike the gas industry, which is afforded a degree of explicitness by the international gaze affixed to multinational corporations such as Shell and Total, Burma’s jade industry is unique in its opacity. And that is just how shadowy former junta profiteers, including former army chief Than Shwe, like it, Global Witness says.