It was the spring of 2017 and Cassius was flying high. The Australian mining company had taken out the employer of the year at an African business excellence awards, appointed the chief of a local tribe as one of its directors in Ghana and had its sights set on a permit that would allow it to dig for the millions of dollars of gold it knew was buried under land it had purchased there.

James Arkoudis of Cassius Mining.

But beneath the surface, trouble was lurking. Shaanxi, the Chinese state-backed mine next door was digging underneath the Australian concession, pilfering Cassius’ gold before it had the chance to extract it. The alleged theft of tens of millions of dollars of gold in this remote part of Africa would trigger a five-year-long legal campaign, the collapse of Cassius’ operations in Ghana and the deaths of dozens of local miners.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age revealed on Monday that Cassius would commence a $395 million lawsuit against the Ghanaian government in London by the end of this year. Its own path to Africa’s gold country was paved with heady optimism and colourful characters.

Cassius emerged out of the shadow of struggling West Australian resource company Chameleon. Chameleon, run by rugby league State of Origin legend Benny Elias, had one last roll of the dice in 2009 after years of speculative investments had netted poor returns.

It had $135,000 left in the bank when it decided to take on Murchison Metals over a $3 billion iron ore project in WA that two former directors had set up while working for Chameleon.

The high-stakes legal gamble paid off in 2012 when the two companies settled for $25 million, freeing two Chameleon directors James Arkoudis and Anthony Karam to take an even bigger punt on an obscure African investment through Cassius.

Former rugby player Benny Elias ran Chameleon.Credit:Fairfax

Arkoudis, a solicitor by training, was riding a wave of self-belief when he met Raymond Alafia Abilba, a Ghanian solicitor in Sydney in 2013.

His father was the paramount chief of Bolgatanga, a poor area in northern Ghana that had just opened to foreign miners and was now in the midst of a gold rush. The Chameleon deal had thrust Arkoudis into the mining investor limelight, now he was being invited to come and see a mining concession that he hoped would net him a multi-million dollar payday.

On that day in Ghana in the summer of 2014, the signs were promising. Fellow Australian company Cardinal Resources had found five million ounces of gold in the area. Arkoudis and Karam decided to take a punt on the unexplored site nearby, 700 kilometres north of the capital Accra.

Upul Anthony: coordinated logistics for Cassius in Ghana.Credit:Louise Kennerley

The Sydney-based company assembled an interesting cast of characters for its African adventure. There was general manager Upul Anthony, who had spent almost five years in jail for defrauding his former employer AMP-owned Cogent Group of $16 million in 2004. And director Radwin El Hassan, who on the eve of the Sydney Olympics had attempted to import 28 kilograms of cocaine inside medical sterilisers with his twin brother Marouf only to be busted by Australian Federal Police.

The two became close in the NSW prison system where Anthony was the accountant, El Hassan the muscle. El Hassan helped Anthony lose 22 kilos. Anthony gave El Hassan financial advice.

The partnership would eventually lead both men to invest in the cash-hungry Cassius once they got out of jail. The company needed capital to fund its gold exploration and directors ready to take on the wild west of African mining to find an untapped fortune.

By 2018, El Hassan, who went by the pseudonym Roy, was in Africa – responsible for Cassius’ security. Anthony coordinated staffing and logistics. The duo were an imposing presence in the back office and on the ground in Ghana, a cut-throat landscape that rewards threats, intimidation and bribery.

Anthony Karam took a punt on African mining through Cassius.Credit:LinkedIn

Cassius would not comment publicly if they were aware of their convictions. Documents show the two were actively involved in helping to run the operations in Ghana by January 2018. But even Anthony and El Hassan’s penchant for unconventional business deals did little to help Cassius get their operation off the ground.

Shaanxi, the Chinese state-backed miner had been busy digging beneath Cassius’ earth and bribing the officials above it.

One former minister in the Upper East region described Cassius as “no good”. “Their hands are too hard,” the minister said in a recorded conversation. In other words, Cassius’ handshake was not pillowed with an envelope full of cash.

Shaanxi was far more brazen. When Cassius took Shaanxi to court in 2018 after an independent report found that the Chinese miner had stolen millions of dollars in gold from the Australian concession, Shaanxi’s officials were seen meeting at the home of the judge presiding over the case, Jacob Boon and then tried to bribe those who had witnessed the meeting. The Chinese state-linked mine then put the son of one of the most senior directors of the Ghanaian Minerals Commission – the body charged with investigating mining in Ghana – on its board.

The investment paid off. In January 2019, the Ghanaian Minerals Commission ordered Cassius to shut down its operations, citing the questionable backgrounds of some of its directors including Anthony and El Hassan as a key reason. Shaanxi, mired in bad publicity over the deaths of dozens of miners allegedly gassed in 2019 to stop them from taking gold from the Shaanxi mine, rebranded as Earl International Group.

In October 2021, it was granted a large-scale mining license that will allow it to process 2000 tons of ore each day.

A month later, Cassius notified the ASX that it had taken $54,000 in JobKeeper payments, three years after millions of dollars in gold had been allegedly stolen from beneath their feet.

The Australian company remains ambitious. On August 3 Cassius announced a capital raising of $1.3 million to help fund two new projects in Madagascar and Tanzania.

But perhaps, just like with Chameleon, Arkoudis’ is gambling that his best shot at a payday is through litigation. Cassius’ $395 million claim will now travel all the way to a London court.

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