French uranium miner Orano said on Tuesday it had filed a lawsuit with the Niger courts over the “arbitrary arrest, illegal detention and unjust confiscation of property” involving its staff and assets in the country.
Niger and neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso have been stepping up pressure on foreign mining companies over the past year, seizing assets and removing permits as all three Sahel countries look to assert more sovereignty over their natural resources.
Orano said it had been unable to contact its mining director in Niger, Ibrahim Courmo, who was taken to the headquarters of the country’s external intelligence agency, the General Directorate of External Documentation and Surveillance, sources told Reuters last week.
The Niger government was not immediately available to comment.
The company added that police are still preventing access to their subsidiary offices in Niger’s capital Niamey.
The Nigerien security services raided the offices of Orano’s subsidiaries Somair, Cominak, Imouraren SA and Orano Mining in Niamey last week and seized cellphones and electronic devices belonging to the staff, the company said.
The managing directors of those subsidiaries were then held and interrogated in their offices, Orano said.
In early December last year Orano said that Niger’s military-led government, which seized power in a coup in 2023, had taken control of the Somair mine, of which Orano owns about 63%, with the government holding the remaining stake.
The company also had a mining permit for its subsidiary Imouraren stripped in June 2024. Canada’s GoviEx Uranium faced similar issues the following month.
Malian authorities have arrested foreign executives and seized gold stocks amid negotiations with mining companies in recent months. Burkina Faso’s junta last month vowed to take control of more foreign-owned industrial mines.
(By Anna Peverieri, Forrest Crellin and Portia Crowe; Editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Susan Fenton)
