No Board Approval. No Shareholder Consent. Yet BCM’s Crown Jewel Ended Up in Angela List’s Hands.
By TNR Invest. Team
A New Republic investigation traces the disputed paper trail, political connections and ministerial decisions behind one of Ghana’s most controversial mining battles.
On a humid day in October 2026, soldiers and police officers descended on the Konongo gold concession in Ashanti Region. They ordered workers off the site, removed private security guards, and took control of a mine that had been at the center of a years-long ownership war. The company that claimed the mine, Northern Ashanti Mines Limited, rushed to court, warning that over $110 million in investment was at risk .
To the public, it looked like a dramatic state intervention against a politically connected miner. But the documents tell a different story. They show that the mine’s current controller, Angela Diala List now known as Angela Attieh did not build this asset.
She acquired it through a chain of transactions that began with a $30 million purchase by a company she did not control, proceeded through a reversal that her own board never authorized, and ended with the asset resting in a company she owns entirely.
Along the way, two of the most powerful officials of the Akufo-Addo administration former Attorney General Godfred Dame and former Lands Minister Samuel Abu Jinapor provided the legal and regulatory cover that made the transfer stick.
And at the center of it all sits a family connection that has never been disclosed in any corporate filing: Angela List is the stepdaughter of Dan Abodakpui, a veteran NDC politician who, according to multiple sources, maintained a quiet friendship with former President Nana Akufo-Addo that transcended party lines.
This is not a story about a legitimate business dispute. It is a story about how a $30 million asset was taken from its registered owner, laundered through ministerial letterheads, and delivered into the hands of a woman who is now using the full machinery of the state and the courts to keep it.
The Purchase That Was Never Supposed to Be Undone
In November 2019, BCM Investment Limited, a Nevis-registered company, signed a Share Purchase Agreement to acquire 283,505,495 shares in Oware Mines Limited the company that held the Konongo Mining Lease from Talos Ghana Limited. The price was $30 million
The agreement was explicit. BCM would take control of the company. BCM would appoint four directors. BCM would be registered in the company’s Register of Members. The share transfer forms were executed. The company’s profile was updated. BCM became the registered holder of 255,126,599 shares, representing 72.88% of the company
For years, that was the public record. BCM owned the mine.
Then, in 2024, something extraordinary happened. A board resolution emerged from Northern Ashanti Mines the company formerly known as Oware Mines claiming that the original transfer to BCM had been “filed in error.” The resolution, dated May 2024, asserted that the share transfer forms had been lodged before certain conditions were fulfilled and that BCM had graciously agreed to transfer the shares back to Talos.
There was just one problem: the resolution was not from BCM. It was from the mining company. And the person who executed the Share Transfer Agreement on behalf of BCM was Angela List the same Angela List who, according to Nevis court records, was embroiled in a bitter dispute with her estranged husband, Paul List, over control of BCM itself.
No BCM board minutes. No BCM shareholder resolution. No Nevis corporate approval. Just Angela List’s signature, witnessed by Jonathan Adongo a man whose employment at BCM had been terminated in June 2021, three years before he affixed his signature to the document that stripped BCM of its most valuable asset.
The Minister Who Signed Off on a Disputed Transfer
The reversal of BCM’s ownership was not the first time Angela List had used a ministerial signature to secure a mining asset.
In 2022, a similar pattern played out at Adamus Resources, another Ghanaian gold miner. Adamus Australia, the Australian parent company holding 90% of Adamus Ghana, had its shares purportedly transferred to Nguvu Mining Limited a Mauritian entity controlled by Angela List by a man named Moses Kobina Bosompim. Adamus Australia insisted Bosompim had no authority to act. The Supreme Court of Western Australia had already ruled that Angela List’s attempts to remove Adamus Australia’s sole director were unlawful .
None of that mattered. On December 23, 2022, the Minerals Commission, acting on a letter signed by then-Lands Minister Samuel Abu Jinapor, formally recognized the change of control from Adamus Australia to Nguvu Mining. The ministry had been notified of the Australian company’s objections. It proceeded anyway.
Four days later, the Registrar of Companies recorded Nguvu Mining as the holder of the 90% stake. The asset was gone.
When The New Republic reached out to sources familiar with the ministry’s internal deliberations at the time, the response was consistent: Jinapor’s office did not independently verify whether the transfer had been authorized. It relied on a board resolution signed by Angela List herself, along with a government-appointed director who sat on the Adamus Ghana board.
The parallels to the Konongo transaction are unmistakable. In both cases, Angela List produced documents that purported to authorize a transfer of shares. In both cases, the rightful owner cried foul. In both cases, the state regulator under the same minister accepted the documents at face value.
Godfred Dame’s Second Act
If Jinapor provided the regulatory cover, Godfred Dame provided the legal shield.
In July 2026, nearly two years after the CID had opened an investigation into allegations of fraud and forgery surrounding the Adamus takeover, Dame by then out of office and in private practice wrote to the Criminal Investigations Department demanding that the police halt their inquiry. The matter, Dame argued, was a civil dispute. The complainant lacked standing. The police should stay their hand .
What Dame’s letter did not mention was his own history with the case. As Attorney General, Dame had personally advised Angela List on the very same dispute. In January 2024, while still in office, Dame’s office issued a formal advisory concluding that Nguvu Mining could continue operating despite an injunction application, reasoning that “merely serving notice of an injunction application did not constitute an injunction itself”
That advisory was issued “at the express behest” of the Attorney-General. Eighteen months later, Dame was representing Angela List privately. The Professional Conduct and Etiquette Rules explicitly prohibit a lawyer from accepting private employment in a matter where they had “substantial responsibility or involvement as a public officer.”
Article 284 of the Constitution bars public officers from putting themselves in positions where their personal interests conflict with their official duties.
Dame did it anyway.
The Family Connection Nobody Mentions
The public record describes Angela List as a mining executive, a CEO, a businesswoman. It does not describe her as the stepdaughter of one of the NDC’s most recognizable elder statesmen.
Dan Abodakpui served as Ghana’s Trade and Industry Minister under Jerry Rawlings and later as Ambassador to Malaysia. He was Jailed for causing financial lost to the state under then President John Agyekum Kufuor. He was a founding member of the NDC’s Council of Elders. In 2014, he was the chairman of the Volta Caucus, a powerful internal NDC grouping . He is also, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the family, the stepfather of Angela List.
That connection matters because it explains something that has puzzled observers: why Angela List, a businesswoman with no known political affiliation, was able to move so seamlessly through the highest levels of the Akufo-Addo administration.
Dan Abodakpui’s relationship with Akufo-Addo dates back decades. Former President Akufo Addo initiated the prosecution of Dan Abodakpui as the then Attorney General but was reshuffled before he could secure the outcome.
The two men moved in the same Accra legal and political circles long before either reached the pinnacle of power. When Akufo-Addo became President, that relationship did not disappear.
It is not necessary to allege that Abodakpui personally intervened on his stepdaughter’s behalf. The point is that Angela List did not need to knock on doors. The doors were already open.
The Mine That Was Never Really Lost
Today, Northern Ashanti Mines is fighting in court to keep its Konongo concession. The company’s lawyers argue that the government’s April 2026 termination of its mining lease violated the Minerals and Mining Act, which requires a 120-day period to remedy alleged breaches before cancellation . They may well be right on the law.
But the legal merits of the lease termination are a separate question from how Angela List came to control the mine in the first place.
The documents show that BCM paid $30 million for the Konongo asset. BCM was registered as the shareholder. BCM’s directors sat on the board. Then, through a transaction that no BCM board ever authorized, the shares went back to Talos. And from Talos, they went to Notre Dame Investment GH Limited a company whose sole shareholder is Angela List
BCM has never been compensated. Its $30 million investment has never been returned. The Nevis litigation over BCM’s ownership remains unresolved, meaning that the very entity that supposedly approved the transfer back to Talos may not have had the authority to do so.
The mine, meanwhile, sits at the center of a legal war. Angela List’s Northern Ashanti Mines is suing the government to keep the concession. The government says the company broke the law. Both sides may be right. But the question that no court has yet answered is the simplest one: how did a woman who owned no shares in BCM end up controlling the asset that BCM bought?
What the Documents Show
The paper trail is not ambiguous. It shows:
1. BCM paid $30 million for 80.99% of Oware Mines Limited in 2019.
2. BCM was registered as the shareholder holding 255,126,599 shares.
3. Angela List signed a 2024 Share Transfer Agreement returning those shares to Talos.
4. No BCM board approval for that transfer has ever been produced.
5. The witness to the transfer, Jonathan Adongo, had been fired by BCM three years earlier.
6. The shares subsequently moved to Notre Dame Investment GH Limited, wholly owned by Angela List.
7. Former Lands Minister Jinapor recognized a parallel disputed transfer at Adamus Resources, despite being notified of the objections.
8. Former Attorney General Dame advised Angela List while in office, then represented her privately after leaving office, then tried to shut down a police investigation into her conduct.
The legal risks for Angela List are substantial. A court could find that the 2024 transfer was void ab initio void from the beginning because BCM never authorized it. It could find that the subsequent transfer to Notre Dame was similarly invalid. It could order the shares returned to BCM, or to whoever the Nevis court determines has lawful authority over BCM.
But courts move slowly. And in the meantime, Angela List controls the mine, controls the litigation, and controls the narrative. She is the victim, her lawyers say the target of a politically motivated campaign by a new government eager to seize assets.
The documents suggest otherwise.
There is a version of this story in which Angela List is simply a savvy businesswoman who out-negotiated her estranged husband and acquired a valuable asset through legitimate means. In that version, the Talos transaction was a straightforward reversal of a deal that never should have closed. The Adamus transfer was a valid change of control. The ministerial approvals were routine. The police investigation is a vendetta.
But that version requires believing that a $30 million share transfer can be undone by a single signature, without board approval, without shareholder consent, without consideration, and without any of the corporate formalities that ordinarily attend the sale of a controlling stake in a mining company.
It requires believing that the same woman who benefited from that reversal just happened to have a stepfather with deep ties to the President whose ministers approved every step of her acquisition spree.
And it requires believing that Godfred Dame, the nation’s former chief legal officer, did nothing improper when he advised Angela List’s company while in office, then went to work for her after leaving, then wrote to the police to demand they stop investigating her.
The documents do not prove Angela List committed a crime. They do prove that the system was bent repeatedly, deliberately, and with the assistance of the highest offices in the land to ensure that a $30 million gold mine ended up in her hands.
The soldiers who took control of Konongo in October 2026 were acting on orders from a new government. Whether that government will unwind the transactions that put Angela List in control is an open question. What is not open is the documentary record. It is there for anyone to read.
The mine is still there too. And so is Angela List.