{"id":79029,"date":"2025-07-23T01:10:01","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T01:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=79029"},"modified":"2025-07-23T01:10:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T01:10:01","slug":"mali-court-rejects-appeal-to-release-four-barrick-employees-judge-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=79029","title":{"rendered":"Mali court rejects appeal to release four Barrick employees, judge says"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A court in Mali on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Barrick Mining\u00a0to release four employees arrested last November, judge Samba Sarr said. <\/p>\n

This is the latest development in a long-running standoff between the Canadian firm and the Mali government over taxes and ownership of mining operations in the country.<\/p>\n

The appeal by the company, which has dismissed the allegations against the four local employees as baseless, was determined by the judge to be \u201cunfounded\u201d, said Alifa Habib Kone, a lawyer for Barrick.<\/p>\n

The employees face charges including money laundering and violation of other regulations, Kone said.<\/p>\n

Barrick has said it refutes the charges against its employees.<\/p>\n

Barrick and Mali\u2019s military-run government have been in\u00a0negotiations<\/a>\u00a0since 2023 over the implementation of a new mining code that raises taxes and gives the government a greater share in the country\u2019s gold mines.<\/p>\n

Barrick owns 80% of the Loulo-Gounkoto mining complex in Mali and the government owns the rest. Operations have been suspended since mid-January after the government blocked Barrick\u2019s gold exports and seized three metric tons of its stocks.<\/p>\n

Malian authorities arrested the four employees in late November and they have been in pre-trial detention in Bamako, according to Barrick\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

Mali also issued an arrest warrant last December for Barrick CEO Mark Bristow, who is based in Toronto. He is accused of money laundering and violating financial regulations, according to the warrant document.<\/p>\n

Governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger \u2013 all led by juntas \u2013 are seeking to renegotiate new terms with gold miners to gain a bigger share of mining revenue at a time when gold prices have soared.<\/p>\n

Mali represents 14% of Barrick\u2019s gold output, and the company generated $949 million in revenue from its operations there in the first nine months last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"MaliA court in Mali on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Barrick Mining\u00a0to release four employees arrested last November, judge Samba Sarr said.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}