Beny Steinmetz Resource Group and Rusal are in the government’s sights
as it prepares to publish its review of the major mining contracts
A review of Guinea’s biggest mining contracts due this month will raise new questions about the future of the US$10 billion Simandou iron-ore project. The report will also...
Vol 53 No 15 |
- GABON
- GUINEA
The fog around Samuel Mebiame is clearing. His signature appears,along with those of ministers Mohamed Lamine Fofana and KerfallaYansané, on the controversial loan Guinea took from the South...
The collapse of an opaque scheme to set up a multi-billion dollar national mining company prompts recriminations in Conakry and South Africa
The Guinean government’s decision this week to shut down a bid by South African businessmen who wield high-level political connections, to run its national mining company follows growing...
• Walter Hennig, Chief Executive Officer of Palladino, a South African. The considerable fortune enjoyed by the Hennig family comes mainly from diamond trading and farming, though Walter...
A favourite of the old regime risks losing his property fortune under the new one
Guido Santullo grew rich on government business while his patron Lansana Conté was President of Guinea. Now, the government has requisitioned his property complex and he threatens to...
Rivalries among conglomerates – Western and Chinese – intensify as the President looks for development funds
Multinational corporations and anti-corruption activists are jockeying for influence in Conakry as President Alpha Condé talks to the China Development Bank about finance for a US$8.6 billion development...
Brazilian mining conglomerate Vale is keeping its operations under close review, after threatening to sell its investments in Guinea last month. After tough talks with its minority partner and President Alpha Condé’s government, Vale has for now pulled back from the brink. Yet it still has grave misgivings about the terms and conditions of a project in which it may have to invest as much as US$10 billion for a stake in one of the world’s richest iron-ore mines.
The financial firm JP Morgan estimates that Simandou’s Vale-controlled blocks can produce 50 mn. tonnes of ore annually by 2020. That compares favourably with the output of...
Hard choices confront President Alpha Condé as he comes under pressure to set a date for parliamentary elections this year. Polling was postponed from November 2011, after Condé...
Vol 5 (AAC) No 12 |
- GUINEA
- CHINA
They were left out in the cold by President Alpha Condé in 2011 (AAC Vol 4 No 11), but the businessmen behind the China International Fund are making...
Vol 5 (AAC) No 10 |
- GUINEA
- CHINA
A government partner is handing over major stakes in the Simandou contracts to Chinese state-owned firms
Despite support from groups like George Soros’s Open Society Institute, President Alpha Condé’s government persists in striking troublesome mining deals. The government and the African Iron Ore Group,...