Billionaire Ibrahim Mahama's company defies court order over $100 million Ghana gold mine

A mining company owned by the brother of Ghana's president has refused to give up a $100 million gold mine at the heart of an ownership dispute, ignoring rulings by an international arbitration court and an English court, according to a news report by Semafor.

The company, Engineers & Planners, is founded and run by Ibrahim Mahama, a brother of President John Dramani Mahama. Investors behind the mine accuse the firm of seizing the site and forging signatures to push through a transfer of shares. E&P has denied the allegations.

At the center is the Black Volta gold mine in northwest Ghana, owned by Azumah Resources, a gold explorer and developer backed largely by U.S. private equity. Azumah acquired prospecting licences in the Wa-Lawra gold belt in 2006, and mining concessions tied to Black Volta were granted in 2014. The belt is considered one of the country's most promising undeveloped gold zones.

The two sides tell very different stories about how ownership was meant to change hands. In arbitration filings, E&P said Azumah's shareholders offered it the right to buy the Black Volta project for $100 million in 2023 under an earn-in agreement. Azumah's investors deny that, saying any right to acquire the mine depended on E&P meeting a series of obligations it never fulfilled. Azumah says it neither sold the project nor authorized any sale.

E&P moved to fund a purchase regardless. In July 2025 it secured a $120 million loan from a West African development finance institution, money it said would go toward acquiring the site. The investors say the transfer that followed was never valid.

The courts have so far sided with Azumah. In a ruling dated Oct. 23, 2025, the International Chamber of Commerce's International Court of Arbitration, sitting in London, ordered E&P to stop trespassing on, occupying or otherwise interfering with the Black Volta and Sankofa mine sites. The arbitration was held in private, but the order surfaced months later when Azumah's investors went to the High Court of England and Wales to enforce it. The underlying contracts were written under English law, which set the United Kingdom as the venue for any dispute.

On June 8, the High Court found that E&P had failed to comply with the arbitration order. Azumah's investors say that second ruling has also been ignored. James Wallbank, managing partner of Ibaera Capital, a U.S. private equity fund among Azumah's backers, said both the arbitration court and the English court had told E&P over the past nine months to stop trespassing and return the assets to the international investors.

E&P disputes that it holds the mine at all. Bobby Banson, a lawyer for the company, told Semafor that E&P is neither occupying Black Volta nor running its operations or tapping its resources. He said E&P had instructed lawyers to set aside the English court's order, and dismissed the arbitration proceedings and the later ruling as public relations gimmicks. Both sides say the arbitration court is due to deliver a final judgment at a hearing scheduled for September.

The case is awkward for a government trying to draw investment into gold. Ghana is Africa's largest gold producer, and the administration is leaning on the sector to build lasting growth after the country's worst economic crisis in decades, which forced a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund. A high-profile fight involving the president's brother, allegations of political influence and defied court orders cuts against that pitch.

It is not the only flashpoint. Australia's Cassius Mining and the Nasdaq-listed, UK-based Blue Gold are each in arbitration against Ghanaian authorities, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars over mineral rights they say were not honored. Ghana denies the claims.

A separate mine has drawn the sharpest scrutiny of the president's family. In April, Ghana rejected a bid by South Africa's Gold Fields to keep operating the Damang gold mine, which it had run for more than two decades, and picked E&P to take it over instead. The government denied favoritism, and spokesman Felix Kwakye Ofosu said the president had recused himself from discussions about the Damang lease to avoid a conflict of interest over his brother's role at E&P.

The disputes have landed as Mahama's government rewrites the rules for mining. New regulations require surface mining to be carried out by wholly Ghanaian-owned companies and underground operations to be at least half locally owned. Reuters reported in April that the Minerals Commission had told international miners, including AngloGold Ashanti, Newmont and Zijin Mining, to move operations to local contractors by December 2026 or face sanctions. Foreign investors have warned they are being squeezed out.

Ghana has long ranked among Africa's more investor-friendly economies, and the reset is testing that record. The government says the overhaul is about keeping more of the country's wealth at home. Critics, including opposition politicians and commentators, have questioned whether it serves broad development or a politically connected few. Either way, the Black Volta standoff suggests the reputational bill is already coming due.