“This was no dumb luck punt,” he said. “We did not win the favour or support of some key officials who expected us to comply with what was put to us,euphemistically,as the ‘Ghanaian culture of gift giving’. Rather we spent the money on the project and money flowed to the community via contracts for tenements and jobs.
“Cassius at the peak of its drilling program had over 60 people working on its concession. All of them were paid a fair wage and much higher than any other mining company in the area. Our cleaners were earning more than what a Shaanxi underground miner was being paid.”
Cassius is preparing to launch a $395 million action this year against the Ghanaian government in the London Court of International Arbitration. Shaanxi had allegedly been digging underneath Cassius’ mine to steal tens of millions of dollars worth of gold at least as early as 2017. Dozens of local miners have also been killed inside the Chinese state-linked mine in northern Ghana. Shaanxi had denied the allegations.
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Cassius claims the Ghanaian government had knowledge of Shaanxi’s trespassing and theft,attempted to redraw boundaries in favour of the Chinese miner and failed to act on allegations of demonstrated corruption at senior levels of the government.
When Cassius took Shaanxi to court in 2018,Shaanxi’s officials were seen meeting at the home of the judge presiding over the case,Jacob Boon,and then tried to bribe those who had witnessed the meeting. Boon has since recused himself from the case,but it has been bogged down in delays and remains before a local court.
The Ghanaian Minerals Commission ordered Cassius to shut down its operations in 2019 despite evidence that Shaanxi was stealing gold from underneath its land. Cassius is expected to confront Samuel Jinapor,Ghana’s minister for natural resources,and the head of the Ghanaian Minerals Commission,Martin Kwaku Ayisi,when they speakat the Africa Down Under conference in Perth on Thursday. Neither was in their current role at the time of the incidents.