Report: U.S. Sanctioned Chinese Mining Companies Control 6 Percent of Nicaragua

Five U.S.-sanctioned Chinese gold mining companies control as much as six percent of Nicaragua’s entire territory thanks to highly favorable gold mining deals signed by the Central American country’s communist regime, the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa revealed on Monday.

The Nicaraguan communist regime led by dictatorial husband-and-wife “co-presidential” couple Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has signed decades-long gold mining lease contracts with at least 15 Chinese mining companies that have effectively handed over control of the nation’s gold resources to China. Those deals have also resulted in Chinese companies reportedly controlling as much as over 1.013 hectares of Nicaraguan land, or the equivalent to 8.5 percent of all of Nicaragua, of which six percent is controlled by five U.S. sanctioned companies.

La Prensa found in its analysis that, between 2023 and February 2026, the Ortega regime signed 52 mining lease contracts with four Chinese companies subject to U.S. sanctions, while a fifth sanctioned company had been already operating in the country since 2019. The contracts are part of a broader series of pro-China policies enacted by Ortega after he had Nicaragua cut ties with Taiwan in December 2021 and fully embrace the Chinese communist regime weeks later — including joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) predatory debt trap program.

The Nicaraguan newspaper identified one of the Chinese companies as Grupo Minero Xiloá, also known as Grumixsa, one of the seven companies sanctioned by the administration of President Donald Trump in mid-April for its links to the Ortega family. La Prensa explained that Grumixsa is one of the companies that has received the “favor” of the Ortega regime despite its lack of known experience in the area, finding itself at the center of the regime’s corporate structure and extortion machinery against local artisanal miners. According to information from the Office of the Attorney General of Nicaragua, the Ortega regime generated $1.961 billion from gold exports during 2025.

U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) explained in April that Grumixsa forms part of a complex network of front companies and front men organized to generate foreign currency, launder sanctioned assets, and reinforce political control for the benefit of the Ortega regime. The company was sanctioned by the American government last month along with Thomas Metal, Brother Metal, Zhong Fu Development, Nicaragua Xinxin Linze Minería Group, and Santa Rita Mining.

According to La Prensa, the Ortega regime is using mining leases to circumvent U.S. sanctions on regime-linked companies such as Comintsa, sanctioned by the United States in 2024 for its ties with the communist regime. Initially, the newspaper explained, the Nicaraguan regime had awarded a 6,000-hectare lease to Comintsa but, in January, the company ceded the lease to Zhong Fu Development. The Chinese company then bounced the lease to a third Chinese company known as “Tutuwaka Mining Company Sociedad Anónima.”

Nicaraguan biologist and activist Amaru Ruiz, who for years has denounced the Ortega regime’s actions to give away his country’s mineral resources to China, described to La Prensa the lease transfers as “laundering.” The expansion of the mining lease deals also presents a serious environmental risk to Nicaragua, he warned, due to the questionable reputation of the Chinese mining companies and lack of environmental protection measures. The pervasive collusion between the Nicaraguan regime and the Chinese companies, as well as the lack of transparency and absence of environmental impact studies, makes monitoring environmental impact effectively impossible.

“They involve high levels of risk from environmental impacts associated with mining activities, ranging from pollution to land-use changes and deforestation. These impacts affect all biodiversity and the ecosystems within those concession areas,” Ruiz told La Prensa.

“It is not known what mining technology they will use — whether it will be open-pit or underground mining — and depending on that, the impacts will be greater or lesser, but there will be an impact on those areas,” he continued. “This is very concerning because none of these companies conducted environmental impact studies when applying for the lease.”

American lawyer and former U.S. Congress advisor Jason Poblete told La Prensa that the findings of the newspaper’s analysis support the case for U.S. sanctions on the Nicaraguan mining sector. Poblete stressed that the Ortega regime uses the gold mining sector as a means of financing itself, and explained that when a company is sanctioned, it transfers the concession to another corporate entity that serves the same purpose.

“Revenue is generated by territorial concessions, which the regime can reallocate. As long as Washington does not treat the recycling of concessions as a punishable offense in and of itself, policy will continue to lag behind the regime,” Poblete reportedly said.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.