Nicaragua grants gold concession to company linked to sanctioned firm
Nicaragua has granted Chinese company Linze Excelente Mineria a 25-year concession for geological exploration and gold mining at the Jade site, covering 262 square kilometers of tropical forest. The company appeared in the country’s register of mining enterprises only last year, the South China Morning Post reports.
Links to a sanctioned company
Corporate documents list Lijun Dong as the legal representative of both Linze Excelente Mineria and Nicaragua Xinxin Linze Mineria Group. The latter company was added to the sanctions list by the US Treasury Department in April. Shiliang Yang, who signed the document granting the Jade concession, is also listed as a lawyer for the sanctioned company.
According to the US Treasury Department, Nicaragua Xinxin Linze received tens of thousands of acres of land from the Nicaraguan government and shipped more than $25 million worth of gold to the United States in the first half of 2025.
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Gold and relations with China
The Jade site is located in an area where gold was first discovered in 1880. Gold is one of the few sources of hard currency for Daniel Ortega, who has led Nicaragua for most of the past four decades and now governs alongside his wife, Rosario Murillo.
Washington has imposed sanctions on the Ortega family and businesses linked to it since the suppression of protests in 2018, during which hundreds of protesters were killed. In response, Managua moved closer to Beijing: Nicaragua severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 2021 and began implementing a free trade agreement with China in 2024.
