Winshear Gold Comments on Move in Share Price

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Winshear Gold Corp. (TSXV: WINS) (‘Winshear’, the ‘Company’, or the ‘Claimant’), formerly Helio Resource Corp., provides the following update on the recent move in its share price, which is related to the Company’s fully funded arbitration proceedings against the Tanzanian Government to recover its investment and damages for the expropriation of its SMP Gold Project in Tanzania.   

Richard Williams, CEO of Winshear, stated: “We learned this morning that ASX listed Indiana Resources has been awarded US$109.5 million in its international arbitration case against Tanzania in addition to an order for Tanzania to repay US$3,859,161 in legal costs and expenses. It is reassuring that the ICSID tribunal in the Indiana case against Tanzania recognised the damage done to shareholders, investors and Indiana when the Tanzanian government decided to abolish Retention Licences without consulting the investor community. Indiana’s arbitration was conducted through the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (“ICSID) and concluded two weeks prior to Winshear’s arbitration proceedings at ICSID against Tanzania in February 2023. We look forward to receiving the outcome of our case against Tanzania.”

Winshear and Indiana are separately seeking to recover costs and damages from the government of Tanzania, through the ICSID arbitration process, for the expropriation of Retention Licenses that covered their respective flagship exploration projects. The ICSID Convention has been ratified by 158 States, including Tanzania. An award issued by an ICSID tribunal is enforceable in any one of those 158 member States as if it were a judgment of one of their own courts.

Background to Winshear’s Claim

In July 2017, the Government of Tanzania amended the Mining Act 2010 by, inter alia, abolishing the Retention Licence classification. The Company’s SMP Mineral Resource was wholly contained within four Retention Licences.

On 10 January 2018, Tanzania published the new Mining (Mineral Rights) Regulations 2018, which cancelled all Retention Licences at which point they ceased to have any legal effect. The rights over all areas under Retention Licences, including the Retention Licences held for the SMP Gold Project, were immediately transferred to the Government of Tanzania.

During the time from January 2018 to December 2019, the Company actively engaged with the Tanzanian Ministry for Minerals and the Mining Commission in an effort to resolve a suitable tenure mechanism for the Project Licence to be reinstated, without success.