Nicaragua has granted a Chinese-owned company linked to one sanctioned by Washington the right to prospect and dig for gold across 262 sq km (101 sq miles) of rainforest, about a quarter the size of Hong Kong.
The 25-year concession over the block, named Jade, went to Linze Excelente Mineria, a company that appeared in Nicaragua’s mining registry only last year. The block is in a corner of the country where prospectors first struck gold in 1880.
Corporate filings list Lijun Dong as legal representative of both Linze Excelente and Nicaragua Xinxin Linze Mineria Group, a firm the United States blacklisted in April. Shiliang Yang, who signed the Jade title, also appears as a lawyer for the sanctioned company.
The US Treasury sanctioned Xinxin Linze in April, saying it had received tens of thousands of acres from the Nicaraguan government and shipped more than US$25 million in gold to the United States in the first half of 2025.
Gold is one of the few sources of hard currency left to Daniel Ortega, who has governed Nicaragua for most of the past four decades and now rules alongside his wife Rosario Murillo.
Washington has sanctioned the family and its business network since a 2018 crackdown that killed hundreds of protesters, and Managua has turned to Beijing in response, breaking with Taiwan in 2021 and implementing a free-trade agreement in 2024.
American buyers take most of the metal, which is why the Treasury has gone after the companies digging it rather than the trade itself.
Because Linze Excelente carries no designation of its own, American banks may still process its payments and refineries may still buy its metal.
Washington officials also claimed that the mining sector had been reorganised since 2020 into a web of front companies built to generate hard currency and launder assets already under sanction, with proceeds from one Managua exporter probably paying for pro-government paramilitary groups.
Linze Excelente was assembled by that route, receiving 10,592 hectares from its sanctioned affiliate in July 2025, its only holdings until this week.
Neither the Chinese embassy in Managua nor the Nicaraguan lawyer general’s office responded to requests for comment.
Concession granted after the sanctions
Linze Excelente applied for the block on June 26 and had its title three days later, accepting the terms on July 13.
The transaction sat unpublished until it surfaced in the official gazette on Monday, and several news agencies reported this week that the concession had been granted that day. The paperwork shows the decision was taken in late June, 10 weeks after the affiliate was blacklisted.
A concession hands over the exclusive right to explore and extract minerals, which the holder may later sell, split or lease with the ministry’s approval.
Villagers already panning gold by hand keep that right, though the company may not dig within 100 metres (328 feet) of a house, a well or a church without written permission from the mines directorate.
Chinese firms now hold Nicaraguan concessions covering 1.28 million hectares, close to a 10th of the country, according to an atlas published in July by the environmental group Fundacion del Rio.
The group’s president, Amaru Ruiz, stripped of his citizenship and living in exile, calculated that 84 blocks had been granted to 22 Chinese companies since 2021, of which 62 overlap indigenous and Afro-descendant territories. Those blocks also hold copper, cobalt, nickel and uranium, the survey found.
Gold pays for everything in the meantime, analysts say, earning Nicaragua US$1.97 billion last year and 22.7 per cent of all export revenue, even despite tough sanctions imposed by the US and other Western countries.
Linze Excelente will pay the Nicaraguan state 25 US cents per hectare in its first year on the Jade block. That comes to about US$6,550 for ground larger than Lantau Island, or less than the price of 50 grams of gold. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
