LatinNews Daily - 28 July 2026

*Nicaragua’s authoritarian government led by co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has authorised two new mining concessions to Chinese mining company, Norther Mining Company SA, one spanning 9,118 hectares (ha) in Nueva Guinea municipality in the South Atlantic autonomous region (Raas), and the other spanning 48,238ha in the municipalities of Laguna de Perlas, El Rama, and Kukra Hill, also in the Raas. The latest concessions follow others awarded since the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) imposed sanctions on seven Nicaraguan individuals and seven companies on 16 April as part of efforts to target Nicaragua’s gold sector. The mining firms sanctioned were: Exportadora de Metales Sociedad Anónima (Emsa); Grupo Minero Xiloa; Thomas Metal; Nicaragua Xinxin Linze Minería Group; Brother Metal; Santa Rita Mining Company; and Zhong Fu Development. On 14 July Nicaraguan environmental NGO Fundación del Río, which has long complained that the concessions are illegal and damaging to the environment, released a new atlas of mining concessions in indigenous territory in Nicaragua which warned that 62 mining lots had been awarded in indigenous territories. The NGO was cited by the local media as saying that these lots spanned 25% of indigenous territories.

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