By Giulia Paravicini and Portia Crowe
(Reuters) -Mali’s military government is holding gold seized from Barrick Gold’s Loulo-Gounkoto mine site at state-owned Banque Malienne de Solidarite (BMS), two sources said, as the miner pursues plans to suspend its operations in the country.
The move escalates an ongoing dispute between Barrick and Malian authorities, who, like fellow military-led governments in neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso, are demanding a bigger share of revenues from Western miners.
Reuters reported on Monday that Malian officials had seized about three metric tons of gold worth $245 million. Barrick confirmed the seizure on Tuesday and said it had suspended operations in response.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Barrick employee in Mali and a consultant for mining companies in the country said the gold was now being stored at BMS.
In a Jan. 2 order seen by Reuters, judge Boubacar Moussa Diarra ordered the seizure of the gold and its storage in the Banque de Developpement du Mali (BDM) in the capital Bamako.
But the two sources said BDM had said it could not securely hold that amount of gold and therefore the gold was placed with BMS.
Malian authorities have not responded to requests for comment on the seizure of the gold or Barrick’s suspension of operations.
Barrick, which employs around 8,000 people in Mali, will furlough expatriate staff by the end of this week and plans to begin furloughing local staff from next week, the employee told Reuters.
Some of the expatriate employees will be relocated to other Barrick mines, others have been told not to return to Mali from leave, the person said.
A skeleton crew of key maintenance, security and emergency workers will stay on, both sources said.
The suspension pressures both sides. Loulo-Gounkoto accounts for around 14% of Barrick’s 2025 estimated gold output, while union representatives have spoken with the mines ministry to voice their concern about job losses, the employee said.
Both sides should consider the “dire social consequences of suspending operations, which would jeopardise the prospects of over 8,000 workers and their families,” a mining union group said in a statement last week.
Gold is also Mali’s top foreign currency earner, accounting for more than 80% of total exports in 2023.
(Reporting by Giulia Paravicini in Nairobi and Portia Crowe in Dakar; Writing by Portia Crowe and Alessandra Prentice; editing by David Goodman, Philippa Fletcher and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
