Acacia braced for compensation claims over African mine deaths

UNDER-PRESSURE mining group Acacia is facing a lawsuit in the UK from relatives of people who died at one of its mine sites.

The FTSE 250 gold miner, which is currently in a dispute with the government of Tanzania over back taxes, could be hit with compensation claims from a group being represented by law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn.

DPG is acting on 10 cases, most of which relate to incidents since 2013, and one as recently as 2016, at Acacia’s North Mara mine, one of three sites it operates in Tanzania.

It is understood the law firm is concerned with allegations that Acacia’s inhouse grievance process is not paying out sufficient compensation to relatives. North Mara has for years been plagued by trespassers attempting to mine gold illegally and has a history of people dying on site.

A Tanzanian government report last year recorded allegations of 65 civilians being killed by police at North Mara since 2006, and 270 complaints of people being injured. Acacia has disputed these numbers but admitted in its annual report earlier this year that there were six intruder fatalities in 2016, two of which were related to “police involvement”. It also reported nine deaths in 2015 and 17 in 2014.

Brad Gordon, the chief executive, told The Daily Telegraph the situation had “improved dramatically” over the last four years thanks to better training and fences being put in place, adding that the company was “quite proud” of the work it had done to shore up community relations. In a written response to human rights group Raid earlier this month, Acacia pointed out that it was one of the few mining companies to publish non-employee fatalities. It said that it was “committed to having complaints made against it… dealt with appropriately”.

In 2015, Acacia reached an out-ofcourt settlement with nine claimants in the UK relating to deaths at North Mara in the period prior to 2013, when it was called African Barrick Gold. North Mara was also the focus of an armed confrontation last month when local villagers stormed the mine.

On Friday Acacia’s shares plunged 20pc after it revealed a 29pc slump in first-half revenue as it counted the cost of an export ban on gold concentrate.