“The name ‘Win-Win’ was all in the philosophy that both win. The company wins, and the landowner wins,” Sailosi Nakelekelevesi, a Fijian national and former Win-Win director, explained.
Nakelekelevesi, whose business relationship with Win-Win boss Dan Shi, a Chinese national, later fell apart, was involved in the successful negotiation with Turarana landowners and the national government for Win-Win to start its operation at Turarana, central Guadalcanal.
“This is way back in 2012 or 13, with a hope for a shared benefit for Win-Win miners and the Turarana Community in Central Guadalcanal,” Nakelekelevesi told In-depth Solomons in an interview.
But according to Joel Jackson, chairman of Koehoto Landowners Association of Turarana, the Chinese mining company simply failed to live up to its name and the so-called philosophy it was promoting from the start.
“It’s disastrous,” Jackson lamented.
Joel Jackson, Chairman and Spokes personof Koehoto Landowners Association of Turarana, inside the Turarana Mine site| Credits: Charley Piringi
“We are all losers! The government lost in revenue/tax, and the landowners lost their resources and natural environment,” he added.
“After ransacking our resources, with little or no support for us, Win-Win is now suspended.
They have no other place to mine but to encroach on our private land as well as the nearby Gold Ridge concession area.”
Expressing his disagreement, Jackson said his people are planning to seize machinery that were left at the mine site after Win-Win’s operation was suspended last month.
Jackson urges the company to pay up its dues to landowners and compensate for the failed agreements, otherwise the mining machines will be theirs.
“Win-Win has deliberately chosen to dishonor all its agreements with us. They promised to upgrade our roads, build our schools, and clinics plus other obligations.
“None of these has been implemented since the company started operations years back.
“I have all the agreements here to prove their failures.”
Sections 5 and 6 of the Community Development Agreement (CDA) between Win-Win and Koehoto Landowners Association stipulate these obligations.
Extract from the Community Development Agreement between Win-Win Mining and Koehoto Landowners Association.
Jackson said their lawyers are working on their complaints to force the company out of Turarana, as well as pay up its dues.
Win-Win’s operation has been suspended in April this year for allegedly breaching the country’s mining laws.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Mines Bradley Tovosia signed off the suspension letter in early April when he was still a caretaker minister.
Tovosia ditched Win-Win, a mining firm, which he has close ties to. Win-Win holds mining licences and prospecting licences in Guadalcanal, Isabel and Malaita.
The firm also supported Tovosia with a brick-making machine, which the minister himself confirmed in parliament in 2022. He also contracted them to do a trans-insular road in his constituency of East Guadalcanal last year, which was never completed “Road to Nowhere”.
The suspension came about in the dying hours of the last caretaker government, in which he was mines minister.
Director of Mines Krista Tapu confirmed the indefinite suspension.
“The Caretaker Mines Minister, Bradley Tovosia has signed a suspension letter to Win-Win Mining company on its mining concession in Turarana, for encroaching inside the Gold Ridge Mining Concession area,” Tapu told In-depth Solomons.
“This is following a 14-day show-cause-notice, that it breached the Mines and Minerals Act by encroaching into rival miners’ Gold Ridge Mining Ltd tenement,” she said.
Asked for a copy, Tatapu said she had no access to the letter.
“I don’t have the signed letter with me, only the Minister got his copy.”
Tovosia was contacted to explain what’s next for Win-Win Mining. He has yet to provide answers to questions put forward to him last week.
Meanwhile, Jackson claimed the company also encroached into his private area of about 200 square meters and urged the company to compensate him.
“I have approached the Ministries of Mines and Environment to come and do an assessment of my land and calculate the value of damages to our properties,” he said.
Apart from the suspension, the Win-Win company has also been deregistered from the company Haus Registry for failing to pay up its annual returns, records from the company’s registry data show.
After its deregistration, it has now been removed from the Company Haus records.
Requests have been sent to the Inland Revenue Commissioner, Joseph Dokekana on how much tax returns Win-Win failed to pay up resulting in its deregistration.
Apart from Turarana, Win-Win Mining acquires concession areas in the Balasuna area of North East Guadalcanal, Isabel province, and Malaita provinces.
In Isabel, it operates under the name Go-Win Company Ltd, in Guadalcanal, it is Win-Win Investment Ltd, and in Malaita, it’s registered under the name New Asia Mining Ltd.
He also registrered New Future Bauxite Mining Co. Ltd in December 2023 under his name, Mr. dan Shi at the Companies registry.
According to Company Haus records, all these are under the same directorship of Chinese national Dan Shi.
When contacted to comment on the issue, a Win-Win spokesperson replied via text message: “For us, we have no time to waste on this. No any good thing out of it.”
Turuarana people washing inside the contaminated Chovohio River; Upstream is the Gold Ridge Mining; and this is Turarana community where Win-Win Mining used to operate\ Credits: Charley Piringi
A company with a history
Win-Win Mining Company registered its business in November 2016. Lots of work happened before its formal registration.
Dan Shi, the company’s director, used to live and do business in Fiji. After 2013, he worked closely with Fijian Nakelekelevesi, who became one of Win-win’s first directors.
Nakelekelevesi told In-depth Solomons before Win-Win launched its operations here, Dan Shi sent him to do some groundwork in Guadalcanal.
A woman from Turarana, doing the dishes in the Contaminated Chovohio River, Turarana\ Credits: Charley Piringi
He used his connection through a relative who was a missionary in Honiara to come over.
“That made it easy for me to communicate with locals,” he said.
After successfully negotiating and getting the mining lease for the Turarana tenement, Nakelekelevesi claimed he was ill-treated and unfairly kicked out by Shi.
“Myself and family were unfairly dismissed here in a foreign land. We have to find our way home.”
In 2020, during the company’s early operations, one of its officers attempted to smuggle 1.7kg of gold which was seized by Customs officials.
The gold bar was later returned to the miners without charge laid on responsible mining officers. Both the then Finance Minister Harry Kuma and Mines Minister Bradley Tovosia said the matter was “resolved administratively”.
In October 2022, Dan Shi threatened to shoot a Turarana landowner with a fake gun. He was charged with intimidation but the case never reached the courts.
Dan Shi then registered a new firm called New Asia Mining, trying to find a way to operate in Malaita Province. He was granted a prospecting licence.
But his workers were chased out of Malaita with their mining machines not long after they arrived to begin their prospecting.
It was its recent encroachment into the Gold Ridge concession area that resulted in its suspension.
In the 1980s Zanex Ltd evaluated the alluvial deposit in the Turarana mining tenement. Win-Win reportedly used Zenex’s information to obtain its mining licence for Turarana.
Former Director for Mines, Nicholas Biliki, a qualified geologist said:
“The proposal by Win-Win was a copy-and-paste work produced on its behalf by persons from the Mines Division, using the Zantex Ltd document, even though they do not have the technical capacity (not even geology graduates) to produce a feasibility study document.
“Without fully complying with standard processes and mining practices the ML was somehow granted in late 2018 because a proposal was submitted by Tovosia.
“This is the practice today therefore is the issue and biggest risk for the industry in this country. There is no one capable of carrying out proper vetting of these proposals locally. We cannot gamble with this non-renewable resource.”
Ends///
