RE:Mali issues arrest warrant for Barrick Gold CEOBarrick Gold has a very checkered past on paying their taxes, and also on environmental things. Barrick fought Tanzania over taxes for years, and only settled things when they paid what they owed. Barrick has made many billions from its big Mali mine. West Africa is a great place to build a mine : amazing deposits, lots of unexplored areas, quick and favorable permits for new mines, cheap labour, and often an easy build due to favourable conditions ( no need to build a 300 mile road up a pristine river valley ,or mine on the Artic Ocean as B2 Gold is doing, as is often the case in places like Canada). For years the African Countries were content with small percents of the pie. That changed when Western Countries - mostly the USA and France attacked Libya and removed the government and destablized everything. As a result of that all the Islamic 'terrorists' now in the Sahel fled Libya. They have caused endless problems. Initially the French sent in some ineffective soldiers , but they cut and ran pretty quickly. In Niger the French robbed the country of Niger for years of the Uranium wealth with the help of a very corrupt French supported Gov. So turning to Russia makes sense, but they will need to pay.
America comes in to these countries sometimes preaching about Democracy, and in Bush II's case even denyed birth control to many countries. America gladly comes in and will build a military base, which the country must pay for, which solidifies American control ( who do you think pays for those huge bases in Japan, Korea, Europe, Saudi etc) .
So makes sense to me that these governments would want to take control
and they need money to do so. One of the largest money makers they have is gold. That said there is no way that Mali or BF , etc. is going to nationalize all the gold mines, or any of them. They don't have the money to develop them for one, and they don't have the priviledge of borrowing internationally. They also would realize that Russia, or China, won't give them a better deal, and the disruption of doing that would be huge and possiblly fatal to some mines. They must also be distrustful of Russia.
Luckily for companies like EDV, B2 Gold, Barrick, they can afford to pay more to the governments as their mines in Mali , for example, are cash cows.
I am sure there are at least two sides to this, but for sure it is not limited to Barricks side.