I wonder why? After all, according to the price chart they’re selling at the worst time ever for the company and its share price:
What’s more, according to the company itself they are going to leave an awful lot of money on the table for the eventual owner of La India. Why on earth should a company sell a project that, for all intents and purposes, is totally de-risked and is a certainty to be permitted? For that, let’s check in on the worlds of company CEO Here’s Mark Child back in March 2022:
Interviewer: “And talking about a great place to be in, let’s move to talk about Nicaragua itself because you’re obviously there. Tell us what it’s like operating in that country.”
Mark Child: “Well I first came to Nicaragua 16 years ago to look at some earn-in concessions and eventually we staked the ground around, I didn’t get the concessions, and I’ve now been full time (in the country) for ten years. Mining projects do take a long time, we’ve had a couple of setbacks in that period, but the government is totally supportive of mines. So, and I’m pleased to tell you that yesterday I met with the Minister of Energy & Mining, Mr. Mansell, and then we drove to The President’s office and I had a meeting for an hour and a half with the President of the country. And I thought it might be 30 minutes, but he was so interested in what we’ve been doing for the last ten years and the work we’re doing in re-opening a mining district, because there was a mine here in 1956 and he knew the area. And he basically is totally supportive of the project and of mining, the country wants to double its gold production in the next five years and Condor and Mina La India is a major part of that. We’re going to have 100,000 ounces day one but in our PEA of last October we demonstrated what we have, it’s going to be 150,000 ounces per annum for nine years if you add the underground ounces in. So that meeting with the President of the country yesterday basically gives a major green light for the construction and project finance and it totally de-risks project in my opinion.”
Rather odd, no? The company today announced that instead of building its “totally de-risked project” that has a “major green light” for both construction and project finance, it’s going to sell it to the highest bidder. Surely they are foregoing heaploads of profit and failing in their fiduciary duty toward shareholder. Or maybe, perhaps, just maybe and might be….Could it be due to the way The USA has just slapped new sanctions on Nicaragua in order to tighten the screw on the long-standing and well-documented abuses by the Ortega dictatorship and this time, specifically, the gold mining sector via its “The General Directorate of Mines (DGM)”? Here’s a quote from the sanction document:
“…DGM is an important piece of state-controlled gold operations in Nicaragua. Ortega and his cronies continue to use proceeds derived from the production and sale of gold to line their own pockets and to pay off those who keep the regime in power. The regime has used this power to intimidate and jail those that speak out about the regime’s corruption and to sow instability around the world, including by supporting Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine.”
And here’s another:
DGM is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Salvador Mansell Castrillo, who is the Nicaraguan Minister of Energy and Mines and whose property and interests in property were blocked pursuant to E.O. 13851 on November 15, 2021.
And yes, that Mr. Mansell is the very same friend Mark Child was meeting with in March, the same Señor who swept him through the protocol halls of power and allowed him to spend a friendly 90 minutes with Daniel Ortega, who in turn was so interested in what they’ve been doing for the last ten years and, according to Mark Child, brings a guarantee that the mine would happen. And you too may have noticed Mark Child’s friend Salvador Mansell was already on the US sanctions list back when they met, so it’s not as if Condor was walking around oblivious to the nature of the Ortega government before the recent ratcheting up of the sanctions against Nicaragua. However, decide to sell out and run away Condor has, so now all it, along with its brokers for the sales process, Hannam & Partners, needs to do is find a buyer with the cash to develop the project into a mine but without any moral compass, a company that doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss about anything except money. A company willing to enable and fund State terrorism and widespread human rights abuses. A company run by people without a single shred of common decency and motivated by sheer, unadulterated greed. In other words, as this is the mining sector it shouldn’t be a difficult sales process.