Mali refuses to free detained staff of Canadian company Reuters
A court in Mali has rejected a request for the conditional release of four employees of Barrick Mining Corporation, who have been detained since 2024 on accusations of money laundering and financing terrorism. The decision was announced on Tuesday by the company's lawyer, Alifa Habib Kone, according to Reuters.
The Canadian mining giant has dismissed the allegations as baseless and filed an appeal challenging what it described as the employees' "arbitrary" detention. However, Kone said Judge Samba Sarr deemed the petition "unfounded."
Barrick, one of the world's largest gold producers, has operated in Mali for nearly three decades, but relations have deteriorated amid a dispute over alleged unpaid taxes and royalties. Tensions escalated in November when four local executives were detained and a warrant was issued for CEO Mark Bristow. Recent negotiations broke down after the Malian authorities demanded a lump-sum payment of 125 billion CFA francs ($197 million) in unpaid revenues, while Barrick proposed a structured payment plan instead.
Last month, Mali's military-led government temporarilystrippedBarrick of control over operations at the Loulo-Gounkoto gold complex in the country's west. A court in Bamako ordered that management of the site be transferred to a state-appointed provisional administrator for a six-month period. Barrick denounced the ruling as illegal and a breach of its contractual agreements, and has filed a case against Mali with the World Bank's arbitration tribunal.
According to Bloomberg, the authorities in the Sahel state seized around a ton of gold from the mine earlier this month, which the provisional administration is expected to sell to fund the site's operations.
The Loulo-Gounkoto mines are 80% owned by Barrick and 20% by the Malian government. In 2023, the former French colony introduced a new mining code allowing the state to claim up to a 30% stake in new projects, as part of efforts to boost public revenues. In June, Mali's economy and finance minister, Alousseni Sanou, stated that a newagreementwith Russia's Yadran Group to establish a gold refinery - 62% owned by the state - would help increase national income from bullion production.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Edmonton Journal
2 hours ago
- Edmonton Journal
Edmonton 'ground zero' for South Asian community extortion plots: RCMP
Edmonton appears to be ground zero for extortion plots that have criminally extracted millions from successful business people within its South Asian community, says a Surrey, British Columbia-based senior law enforcement leader with the RCMP. Article content 'Edmonton was probably the first place that started to see the series of extortions in the fall of 2023 really. And then, of course, we saw extortions here in the Lower Mainland, as well as in Peel Region in Ontario,' RCMP Superintendent Adam MacIntosh told Postmedia in a phone interview this week. Article content Article content Article content 'In January of 2024, the RCMP said, 'Obviously, there's connections across the country. We need to look at how we might be able to support the police of jurisdictions across the country.'' Article content Article content In addition to being in charge of NCST, MacIntosh wears the hat of leading the Cyber and Financial Investigation Teams (CFIT) in British Columbia — both high stakes, high accountability roles, generating intelligence and evidence through investigation, looking for inter-relation of crimes across the country, and internationally. Article content Edmonton as incubator Article content The NCST supported the Edmonton Police Service as a ring of extortion emerged in the Project Gaslight investigation where South Asian home builders were being targeted via arson, and continues to probe other organized crime, including transnational events, drug trafficking, cyber security and national security,. Article content Article content 'You should be very proud of the work done by the Edmonton Police Service in Project Gaslight. They've done some fantastic policing which has resulted in positive outcomes of suppression through enforcement and charges,' said MacIntosh. Article content Article content 'They stood up another new task force, and there's simply some really great work going across this country with police agencies around a very complicated, sophisticated group of organized crime related to these extortions.' Article content The suspected kingpin charged in Project Gaslight, is still in Dubai. Canadian authorities are planning to extradite Maninder Singh Dhaliwal, who has an Aug. 1 Edmonton court date, along with four other Edmontonians charged in the case.
Winnipeg Free Press
3 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
French authorities investigate if Jewish passengers were removed from flight due to religion
PARIS (AP) — French authorities are trying to establish whether a group of young French citizens were removed from a plane bound for Paris from Spain this week because they are Jewish. The airline, Vueling, has denied the claims. Several dozen French passengers on Wednesday were kicked off a flight leaving the Spanish city of Valencia for Paris, for what Spanish police and the airline described as unruly behavior. France's ministry for Europe and foreign affairs said in a statement on Saturday that the minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, contacted the CEO of Vueling, Carolina Martinoli, to express his deep concern 'about the removal of a group of young French Jews from one of the company's flights.' Barrot also requested more information to 'determine whether these individuals had been discriminated against on the basis of their religion.' A similar request has been made to the Spanish ambassador to France. Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. 'Ms. Martinoli assured Mr. Barrot that a thorough internal investigation was underway and that its findings would be shared with the French and Spanish authorities,' the ministry said. Vueling previously denied reports that the incident, which involved the removal of 44 minors and eight adults from flight V8166, was related to the passengers' religion. Some Israeli news outlets reported that the students were Jewish and that their removal was religiously motivated, a claim that was repeated by an Israeli minister online. Spain's Civil Guard said the minors and adults were French nationals. A Civil Guard spokesperson said the agents involved were not aware of the group's religious affiliation. A Vueling spokesperson said the passengers were removed after the minors repeatedly tampered with the plane's emergency equipment and interrupted the crew's safety demonstration. A Civil Guard spokesperson said the captain of the plane ordered the removal of the minors from the plane at Valencia's Manises Airport after they repeatedly ignored the crew's instructions. On Thursday, the Federation for Jewish Communities of Spain expressed concern about the incident. The group said that Vueling needed to provide documentary evidence of what happened on the plane.
Toronto Star
4 hours ago
- Toronto Star
How companies can smash the lavender ceiling for LGBTQ workers
Across the world, LGBTQ+ communities are confronting a growing tsunami of hostility — laws targeting their identities, escalating social ostracism, and rhetoric that feels ripped straight from darker chapters of history. But there's another battlefront, quieter yet no less fierce: the sleek, hushed boardrooms of corporate power. In Canada, as in much of the world, the lavender ceiling remains stubbornly intact, nearly invisible yet profoundly unyielding. Take this sobering statistic: among the more than 9,300 directors who graced Toronto Stock Exchange-listed companies from 2015 to 2022, just 0.15 per cent were openly LGBTQ+. That's a stark contrast to the 4.4 to to nine per cent of the Canadian population who identify as LGBTQ+. The math here isn't merely off — it's screamingly wrong. It suggests not just oversight, but wilful ignorance.
