More revelations in respect of the grounds for the revocation of the mining leases of Adamus Resources have emerged including more than GH¢205.83 million in statutory arrears, an additional US$2.56 million owed to the Minerals Commission and US$224.61 million transferred to related parties between 2020 and 2024.
Findings by a Ministerial Review Committee show significant financial, production-reporting and environmental compliance breaches.
The findings raise questions over the company’s accounting for gold production and exports, after discrepancies running into thousands of ounces were identified between figures submitted to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Minerals Commission and the company’s own shipment records.
The concerns are particularly significant because records from the GRA indicate that Adamus Resources produced approximately 8.8 tonnes of gold valued at more than US$1 billion between 2020 and January-March 2026.
Yet, according to the review, the company accumulated GH¢86.78 million in royalty arrears to the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) dating from 2020, GH¢119.04 million in tax arrears to the GRA dating from 2023, and US$2.56 million in annual payments owed to the Minerals Commission.
The committee further found that Adamus allegedly transferred more than US$224.61 million to related parties between 2020 and 2024, including approximately US$123.14 million to Segala Mining Corporation SA, Semico 1 and Semico 2 in Mali.
Taken together, the findings form the core of a much broader regulatory and financial compliance controversy and underpin the committee’s recommendation that the revocation of the company’s mining leases be upheld.
More than GH¢205m owed state
At the centre of the financial concerns are unpaid statutory obligations which the committee said should have accrued to the state from Adamus Resources’ mining operations.
The company was found to be in arrears of GH¢86.78 million in royalties payable to MIIF from 2020, while its outstanding tax obligations to the GRA stood at GH¢119.04 million, dating from 2023.
In addition, the company owed US$2.56 million in annual payments to the Minerals Commission.
The two cedi-denominated obligations alone amount to approximately GH¢205.83 million, excluding the US$2.56 million owed to the Minerals Commission.
The significance of the arrears extends beyond an accounting disagreement between a mining company and state agencies.
Royalties, taxes and regulatory payments are among the principal mechanisms through which Ghana converts the extraction of its mineral resources into public revenue.
Consequently, every unpaid statutory obligation potentially represents revenue unavailable to the state for infrastructure, social services and other national development priorities.
The committee’s findings therefore raise a fundamental question about whether the state received the full financial benefit due from the extraction of gold at Adamus Resources’ concessions.
US$1bn gold output, but statutory arrears
The financial picture becomes more striking when placed alongside the value of Adamus Resources’ gold production.
Per the report, GRA records indicate that between 2020 and January-March 2026, the company recorded approximately 8.8 tonnes of gold valued at more than US$1 billion.
Under the applicable arrangements, 10 per cent of the relevant proceeds were expected to be paid to MIIF.
Despite the scale of gold production and revenue involved, the company accumulated significant arrears to MIIF and the GRA.
The committee consequently rejected the argument that the failure to settle statutory obligations could simply be explained by temporary cash-flow difficulties.
Its findings pointed instead to evidence suggesting deliberate non-compliance, particularly when the unpaid obligations were considered alongside alleged substantial transfers to related companies.
US$224.61m related-party transfers
One of the most serious financial findings concerns the movement of money from Adamus Resources to related parties.
The committee’s examination of the company’s financial statements found that more than US$224.61 million was transferred to related parties between 2020 and 2024.
Of that amount, approximately US$123.14 million went to Segala Mining Corporation SA, Semico 1 and Semico 2 in Mali.
The transfers became particularly significant because they occurred while Adamus Resources was already carrying substantial statutory arrears.
The committee therefore questioned the explanation that the company’s failure to meet its obligations was simply the result of a lack of funds.
The central concern is straightforward: if the company had sufficient resources to undertake transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars with related entities, why did substantial statutory obligations to the Ghanaian state remain unpaid?
The issue, therefore, is not merely the existence of related-party transactions.
Such transactions can occur legitimately in corporate structures.
Rather, the committee’s concern was the timing and scale of the transfers in relation to the company’s outstanding obligations to the state.
The findings suggest that significant funds were available for transactions within the corporate group while payments required under Ghana’s mining and tax regime remained outstanding.
That situation, the committee indicated, weakened the argument that the defaults were merely the consequence of temporary financial difficulties.
Gold figures do not match
The committee also uncovered what it considered serious inconsistencies in Adamus Resources’ gold production and export records.
A major difficulty was the company’s failure to produce its statutory Gold Production Book, a document that could have provided an independent basis for verifying the quantities of gold produced and shipped.
The committee was therefore forced to rely on Form 16A monthly returns and royalty returns submitted to GRA.
Those records themselves generated further questions.
Between 2020 and January-March 2026, discrepancies between Form 16A records and GRA royalty returns amounted to 6,580.04 ounces of gold.
Using the Bank of Ghana exchange rate of July 12, 2026, the committee estimated the associated revenue variance at approximately US$27.13 million.
The differences became even more pronounced when the figures reported by Adamus Resources to different government institutions were compared with the company’s own shipment records.
For the period covering 2024 to January-March 2026, Adamus reported 72,194.94 ounces of gold to GRA.
For the same period, it reported 71,553 ounces to the Minerals Commission.
However, the company’s own shipment records showed 74,375.14 ounces of gold.
The differences between the figures raise fundamental questions about the actual quantity of gold produced and exported and, consequently, the amount of royalties and taxes properly due to the state.
Questions over missing production book
The failure to provide the Gold Production Book intensified those questions.
The production book would ordinarily provide an important means of independently reconciling production, processing, inventory and shipment records.
Its absence meant that the committee had to reconstruct production figures from records submitted to different government institutions.
That process exposed discrepancies which the committee considered serious enough to warrant further investigation.
The committee identified additional variances, including one valued at approximately US$12.02 million and another estimated at approximately US$21.30 million.
The cumulative inconsistencies prompted the committee to describe the records as “suspicious” and conclude that they appeared to have been prepared with the purpose of evading statutory liabilities.
Such a conclusion, if established through the appropriate enforcement and legal processes, would go well beyond ordinary accounting errors.
It would raise the more serious possibility of deliberate under-declaration of mineral production and revenue.
Gold smuggling questions emerge
The discrepancies have inevitably raised questions about whether the unexplained differences could be linked to attempts to conceal the actual volume of gold produced and exported.
The question is particularly important because the quantity of gold declared by a mining company directly determines the royalties, taxes and other payments that accrue to the state.
If production is under-declared, the state could potentially lose revenue while the actual mineral output moves through channels not captured by official records.
The committee’s concern was therefore not simply about inconsistent paperwork.
It went to the integrity of Ghana’s mineral accounting and revenue-collection system.
The absence of the Gold Production Book makes independent verification even more difficult.
The central question remains: why was the document not made available to the committee?
If the production records were accurate and complete, access to the statutory book should ordinarily have assisted the committee in reconciling the competing figures.
Additional corporate debts
The financial concerns extend beyond statutory obligations.
The committee also identified significant outstanding debts owed by Adamus Resources to institutions including GOIL and GRIDCo.
The committee indicated that further details of those outstanding debts would be released in due course.
Those liabilities add another dimension to the company’s financial position and raise questions about its overall ability and willingness to meet obligations arising from its operations.
Community development concerns
The review also considered concerns raised by the Eastern Nzema Traditional Area, which hosts the mining operations.
The Traditional Council alleged that Adamus Resources owed approximately US$2.5 million from a US$10 million Community Development Fund.
It further alleged that mineral royalties due to the traditional area had not been paid for eight years.
The complaints were not limited to financial obligations.
The Traditional Council also raised concerns over inadequate infrastructure, deteriorating roads, flooding and challenges associated with the Salman Resettlement Project.
These concerns bring the controversy into the wider debate about the social licence of mining companies and whether communities hosting mineral resources receive adequate and predictable benefits from mining operations.
EPA permit timeline raises questions
The committee’s concerns also extended to environmental compliance.
Two Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permits issued to Adamus Resources show unusual timelines involving the company’s gold mining and processing operations in the Ellembelle District of the Western Region.
The first permit, EPA/EMP/313, covers operations at Salman.
It states that the authorisation was valid from July 20, 2017, to July 19, 2020.
However, the certificate was officially issued on December 19, 2024, more than four years after the stated validity period had already expired.
The second permit, EPA/EMP/316, covers the Nzema Gold Mining and Processing Operation.
It indicates a validity period from December 21, 2023, to December 20, 2026, but was officially issued ony December 16, 2024.
This means the permit was issued almost a year after the stated authorisation period had begun.
The chronology creates a significant regulatory puzzle.
The 2017–2020 permit expired in July 2020, but its certificate was not issued until December 2024.
Meanwhile, the subsequent permit had already commenced on December 21, 2023, before being formally issued in December 2024.
Both certificates were therefore issued in the same week in December 2024, despite covering different periods, with the older permit issued after the newer one.
The documents do not explain why the certificates were issued so late or why the older permit followed the newer one.
Operations before permit issuance
The timeline raises a more fundamental question about whether Adamus Resources operated during periods when it did not have the required environmental authorisation formally issued.
If the company was operating during the four-year period after the stated expiry of the earlier permit and before the formal issuance of the relevant documentation, the circumstances under which those operations continued warrant serious scrutiny.
The issue is particularly important because environmental permits are intended to ensure that mining activities are subjected to regulatory scrutiny before and during operations.
Questions therefore arise about the regulatory oversight provided during the period in which the permit documentation was apparently not formally issued.
It also raises a broader question for the mining sector: whether Adamus Resources was an6 isolated case or whether other companies have operated under similarly unclear environmental permitting arrangements.
Ghanaian ownership not exemption
The controversy has also generated arguments that Adamus Resources, as a Ghanaian-owned company, should receive special consideration and should not have its mining lease revoked.
However, the findings raise a fundamental principle: Ghanaian ownership cannot exempt a company from compliance with Ghanaian law.
A locally owned mining company is expected to meet the same statutory requirements concerning royalties, taxes, environmental permits, production records, community obligations and regulatory fees as any other operator.
Indeed, local ownership should strengthen, rather than weaken, the expectation that mineral wealth is managed transparently and that the Ghanaian state and host communities receive their legitimate benefits.
The issue is therefore not whether Adamus Resources is Ghanaian-owned but whether it complied with the conditions under which it was granted the right to extract Ghana’s mineral resources.
Committee recommends revocation
The Ministerial Review Committee was established by the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, after Adamus Resources petitioned against the revocation of its Nkroful, Akango and Salman mining leases.
The committee, chaired by Prof. Jerry Samuel Yaw Kuma, was tasked with independently examining the circumstances surrounding the revocation and making findings and recommendations.
Its assessment was that the breaches identified were serious and fundamental to the integrity of Adamus Resources’ mining leases.
It consequently recommended that the revocation be upheld.
The committee also called for additional regulatory, environmental and financial enforcement measures, including a comprehensive audit of the company’s activities.
A wider test for mining governance
The Adamus Resources case now presents a wider test for Ghana’s mining governance framework.
At stake is not only the future of one mining company but the credibility of the systems through which the state monitors gold production, collects royalties and taxes, enforces environmental obligations and protects the interests of mining communities.
The reported GH¢205.83 million in statutory arrears, the additional US$2.56 million owed to the Minerals Commission, the US$224.61 million in related-party transfers, the more than US$1 billion in reported gold production value and the discrepancies involving thousands of ounces of gold collectively create a case that demands rigorous scrutiny.
The environmental permitting questions add another layer to the controversy, while the concerns of the Eastern Nzema Traditional Area highlight the human and community dimensions of the dispute.
Ultimately, the central issue is accountability.
Ghana grants mining companies access to a finite national resource on the understanding that operators will comply with the law, pay what is due, protect the environment, maintain accurate production records and contribute to the development of host communities.
The Ministerial Review Committee’s findings suggest that Adamus Resources may have fallen short on several of those obligations.
Whether each allegation withstands the appropriate enforcement and legal processes remains to be determined. But the scale and breadth of the findings make clear that the matter cannot be reduced to a disagreement over administrative procedures.
It raises fundamental questions about how Ghana protects its mineral wealth, tracks the gold extracted from its soil and ensures that the state and communities receive the revenues and benefits to which they are entitled.
