~snip
I became interested in this topic because of the current happenings in my area. We started seeing an increase in the population of foreigners (mainly Asians) around our community. Most of them are engaging in illegal mining of materials that we don't know. Some of them were arrested and we later discovered that they were mining some rare earth metals.
Moving to another country to extract rare materials without permission already tells that there are flaws in the system.
Some parts of the Asian and Western world has always find interest in other people's rare earth metals, especially in those third world countries. What if someone was actually paid?. It happens a lot in so many third world countries. These foreigners makes a deal with either the government or anyone in charge, in exchange for their earth metals.
Sometimes these foreign companies do it smartly, but it's still robbery. Now they come into the country with one excuse of handling a different contract, then they secretly scout for where these rare earth metals are and when they detect some costly ones, they find a way of buying the properties, sealing the whole environment and secretly turning it into a mining and extraction site.