Ministerial Review flags GHS205m in unpaid obligations, US$224m in related-party transfers by Adamus Resources Limited
The Ministerial Review Committee has uncovered significant financial and reporting discrepancies in the operations of Adamus Resources Limited, raising serious questions about the revenue Ghana may have lost from the company’s mining activities.
The Committee’s findings reveal discrepancies in gold production and shipment records, outstanding statutory obligations and debts owed to state institutions, suggesting that the financial implications of the Adamus case may be far greater than previously reported.
The Ministerial Review Committee’s findings on Adamus Resources’ lease revocation have revealed that the company was in arrears of GHS86.78 million in royalties payable to the
Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF) from 2020.
The company also had GHS119.04 million in tax arrears to the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) dating from 2023, together with US$2.56 million in annual payments owed to the Minerals Commission.
The figures put the company’s total statutory arrears at approximately GHS205.83 million, plus US$2.56 million.
They represent money that, according to the committee, should have gone to the state as part of the company’s obligations for extracting Ghana’s mineral resources.
The financial question becomes even more troubling when the company’s unpaid obligations are considered alongside the movement of money to related parties.
The committee’s review of Adamus Resources’ financial statements found that the company transferred more than US$224.61 million to related parties between 2020 and 2024.
Of that amount, approximately US$123.14 million was transferred to Segala Mining Corporation SA, Semico1 and Semico 2 in Mali.
The committee therefore rejected the explanation that the failure to pay statutory obligations was simply caused by a lack of cash or temporary financial difficulties. Its conclusion was that the evidence pointed to deliberate non-compliance.
This is where the financial misconduct allegations take on greater significance. The issue is not simply that Adamus Resources owed the state money.
The concern is that while substantial statutory obligations remained outstanding, millions of dollars were still being transferred to related companies.
In practical terms, the committee’s findings suggest that money was available for significant transactions within the corporate group, yet payments due to the Ghanaian state were left outstanding.
The committee noted that these related-party transfers occurred while the company was already in significant arrears, weakening the argument that the transactions were merely routine business activities.
For a country whose mineral resources are constitutionally held in trust for the people, this raises a serious public-interest concern.
A mining company does not simply extract gold and keep the proceeds as private income. It
is expected to declare its production accurately and pay the royalties, taxes and other statutory charges required by law.
The failure to pay those obligations therefore has implications beyond Adamus Resources’ balance sheet.
Every cedi in unpaid royalties or taxes potentially represents revenue that the state cannot deploy for public services, infrastructure and national development.
The committee also uncovered significant outstanding debts owed by Adamus Resources to institutions, including GOIL and GRIDCo, in addition to the statutory arrears already identified in the report.
The committee indicated that further details of these outstanding debts are expected to be released in due course.
The committee also uncovered serious inconsistencies in the company’s gold production and export records. Adamus Resources reportedly failed to produce its statutory gold production.
Book, forcing the committee to rely on Form 16A monthly returns and royalty returns submitted to the GRA.
Those records themselves raised further questions. Between 2020 and January to March
2026 discrepancies between Form 16A records and GRA royalty returns amounted to
6,580.04 ounces of gold, with the committee estimating the associated revenue variance at approximately US$27.13 million using the Bank of Ghana rate of July 12, 2026.
The figures reported by the various state institutions also failed to match; for example, between the years 2024 and 2026, January to March, Adamus reports show the company reported 72,194.94 ounces of Gold to GRA, and that same period the company reported 71,553 ounces of Gold to the Minerals Commission whilst the company’s own record of shipments of gold stood at 74,375.14 ounces of gold.
Below is a table showing the discrepancies in the gold figures reported by Adamus Resources and various state institutions.
Period: 2020 to January–March, 2026
REPORTING SOURCE GOLD REPORTED (OUNCES)
Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) 72,194.94 oz
Minerals Commission 71,553.00 oz
Adamus’ own shipment records 74,375.14 oz
Based on the discrepancies reflected in the table, could this amount to evidence of gold smuggling or an attempt to conceal the actual volume of gold produced and exported? Could the company’s failure or refusal to provide its Gold Production Book to the Ministerial Review Committee also have been intended to prevent the committee from independently verifying the actual quantities of gold produced and shipped?
These questions are important because the figures submitted to the various state institutions do not match the company’s own shipment records. If there was nothing to conceal, why was the production book not made available to the committee for verification?
The committee identified additional variances from those figures, including one equivalent to about US$12.02 million and another estimated at approximately US$21.30 million.
These discrepancies matter because the amount of gold produced and exported directly affects the royalties and taxes that should be paid to the state.
The committee subsequently described the records as “suspicious” and concluded that they had been prepared with the purpose of evading statutory liabilities.
If established through the appropriate enforcement and legal processes, such conduct would represent far more than poor bookkeeping. It would strike at the heart of Ghana’s ability to know how much gold is being produced and how much revenue it is entitled to collect.
The financial concerns did not end with taxes and royalties owed directly to the central government.
The Eastern Nzema Traditional Area also raised concerns over an alleged US$2.5 million outstanding balance from a US$10 million Community Development Fund.
The Traditional Council further alleged that mineral royalties due to it had not been paid for eight years. These complaints were accompanied by concerns about inadequate infrastructure, deteriorating roads, flooding and problems associated with the Salman Resettlement Project.
Put together, the financial findings present a picture that demands closer scrutiny. The concern is not simply that a mining company may have breached administrative requirements. The more serious question is whether Ghana received the full financial benefit it was entitled to from the extraction and export of its gold.
The committee’s overall assessment was that the breaches identified against Adamus
Resources were serious and fundamental to the integrity of its mining leases.
It therefore recommended that the revocation be upheld and called for additional regulatory, environmental and financial enforcement measures, including a comprehensive audit of the company’s activities.
The alleged failure to pay more than GHS205 million in statutory obligations, alongside
US$2.56 million owed to the Minerals Commission, coupled with the reported US$224.61 million in related-party transfers, presents a financial compliance issue that cannot simply be brushed aside as a technical dispute.
Adamus defaults on regulatory fees after earning U$1 billion between 2020 and January-
March 2026
Records from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) indicate that between 2020 and January–
In March 2026, Adamus Resources reportedly recorded approximately 8.8 tonnes of gold, valued at over US$1 billion.
Under the applicable arrangements, 10 per cent of the relevant proceeds was expected to be paid to the Minerals Income Investment Fund (MIIF).
However, the records indicate that the company defaulted on its obligations to MIIF, alongside outstanding tax obligations to the Ghana Revenue Authority.
For all these years, the company was reportedly producing gold worth more than US$1 billion, while questions remain over unpaid statutory obligations and regulatory compliance.
This raises serious concerns about the financial cost to the Ghanaian economy and the revenue that may have been lost by the state.
There are also arguments that the company is Ghanaian-owned and, therefore, its mining lease should not have been revoked. But does Ghanaian ownership exempt any company from complying with the country’s laws and regulations?
Being a Ghanaian-owned company should not mean being allowed to operate without the required permits, pay statutory obligations late, or fail to account properly for the gold produced and exported.
Late issuance of Adamus Resources EPA permits in Ellembelle
Two Environmental Protection Agency permits issued to Adamus Resources Limited show that the company received new authorisation long after its previous permit had expired and that the paperwork for both permits was released in the wrong order.
The documents, both signed by the EPA Deputy Executive Director of Operations, cover gold mining and processing operations in the Ellembelle District of the Western Region.
The first permit, EPA/EMP/313, authorises operations at Salman and states that the authorisation covered the period from 20 July 2017 to 19 July 2020.
However, the certificate was officially issued on 19 December 2024, more than four years after the stated period had already ended.
This raises serious questions about how Adamus Resources was able to operate under the permit before the document was officially issued.
The second permit, EPA/EMP/316, covers the NzemaGold Mining and Processing Operation and states that the authorisation ran from 21 December 2023 to 20 December 2026.
However, the certificate was issued on 16 December 2024, meaning the company had already been operating under the stated authorisation period for almost a year before the permit was officially issued.
This has created a confusing timeline. The 2017-2020 permit expired in July 2020, but its certificate was not issued until December 2024.
In the meantime, the next permit covering December 2023 to 2026 had already started, and its certificate was also issued late in December 2024, but before the expired one.
The fact that both certificates were issued in the same week in December 2024, and in reverse order, raises questions about EPA’s record-keeping and processing times.
It is not clear from the documents why the permits were issued so late or why the older one came after the newer one.
ILLEGAL OPERATIONS
The documents indeed established that Adamus was operating before the issuance of its EPA permit; the circumstances under which the company was allowed to continue operating without the required environmental clearance warrant serious scrutiny because it shows the company was operating illegally for four years.
The issue, however, does not appear to be limited to the EPA permit alone. If the company had not completed the required environmental approval process, how was it able to continue with operations?
The situation raises a broader concern: if other mining companies are expected to comply with the same regulatory procedures, does Adamus represent an isolated case, or are there other companies operating under similar circumstances?
The Ministerial Review Committee was established by the Lands and Natural Resources Minister.
Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, after Adamus Resources petitioned against the revocation of its
Nkroful, Akango and Salman mining leases.
Source: Ghana/otecfmghana.com/Francis Appiah
