Australian Cassius Mining Company sues Ghana for $277 million

The company’s Gbane project in north-eastern Ghana includes a large-scale exploration license covering a total area of ​​13.8 square kilometers². It is located within the Talency District in the Upper East Region, adjacent to the currently producing Shaanxi Gold Mine.

Cassius also had a long-running dispute with Shaanxi, alleging that the Chinese mining company that ran the mine dug hundreds of meters underground in its concession and plundered tens of millions of dollars in gold from its veins, according to investigations he conducted. the Sydney Morning Herald And a local journalist.

Shaanxi has also been accused of cracking down on small-scale miners from their mine site in northern Ghana, including releasing poison gas that killed 16 people. Since 2013, more than 60 miners have allegedly been killed in Shaanxi mines.

Despite these allegations, which Shaanxi denied, Ghana chose to turn a blind eye. Instead, it shut down the nearby Cassius project in 2019 over what it calls “non-compliance with the Constitution” because it had not been properly ratified under new Ghanaian law.

“Ghana’s actions, including its failure to renew Cassius’s prospecting license, resulted in Cassius being deprived of the full value and profits of its gold project in Ghana,” Cassius stated in his press release.

To support its claim, the company relied on senior quantum consultants AMC in Perth, Western Australia, and its secretariat in Washington, DC.

This claim is being prosecuted through the legal framework of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act 2010 (Ghana), which is largely based on provisions of the United Nations Commission on International Trade (UNCITRAL).