Family desperate for answers from Perenti following death under suspicious circumstances in 2020

An Australian father in his 30s was found dead in a Ghanaian hotel room with poison in his system, leaving loved ones to believe a giant Perth-based mining services contractor is involved in a cover-up.

The man hailed from regional WA and died in November 2020 as an employee of the Underground Mining Alliance.

UMA is a joint venture majority-owned by Barminco subsidiary Africa Underground Mining Services. Barminco itself is a subsidiary of Australian Securities Exchange-listed Perenti.

He worked at the Obuasi gold mine in the West African country of Ghana and is understood to have last been seen alive with a handful of colleagues at a bar in the nearby namesake town of Obuasi.

His toxicology report shows no evidence of alcohol or drugs, only highly elevated levels of pesticides, a finding Perenti was made aware of at the time.

“The company was helpful and said all the right things at first but once questions started being asked they stopped engaging with us,” a family member of the man told The West.

“I think there’s been foul play and Perenti has helped cover it up.

“We still have no answers after all these years.”

A Perenti spokesman rejected this assertion.

“Perenti categorically and emphatically rejects the suggestion that it has been involved in a ‘cover up’ regarding this tragic incident,” he said.

Multiple sources have claimed that in the aftermath of the man’s sudden death, a Perenti workmate who was with him during his final hours was sacked and returned to Australia.

The Perenti spokesman did not respond to this allegation when it was put to the company, stating the “tragic death” was “not work-related”.

“The matter was dealt with by Ghanaian and Australian authorities,” he said.

The local police in Obuasi were responsible for the investigation into his death.

The only Australian-based authority involved during the process was the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who provided consular assistance to the man’s family to help them repatriate his body.

His family have also expressed anger that it took eight weeks for the body to be flown back to Perth to be laid to rest, while his phone and iPad were never returned.

A Perenti spokesman said COVID was behind the flight delay but did not to respond to queries regarding the missing items.

“As appropriate, we worked with authorities to repatriate his body to Australia,” the spokesman said.

“These events took place during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which included country restrictions and challenges with flight availability.

“We have protocols in place to manage unexpected, non-work-related events such as this at our global locations, and these protocols were appropriately utilised at the time.”

Perenti has approximately 11,000 employees spread across Australia, North America, Europe and Africa.

Dark Past in Africa

As the death occurred offsite it was not recorded in Perenti’s safety statistics, which is standard procedure in the industry, but it adds another blemish to the $900 million company’s track record on the African continent.

Last month Perenti called a halt to work at the Mana gold mine in Burkina Faso — a country that neighbours Ghana to the south — after one of its workers was killed on site.

Just over four years prior a terrorist attack in Burkina Faso killed 19 Perenti employees.

In May 2022 two Perenti workers were killed after an “incident” at the Khoemacau copper project located in the Southern African nation of Botswana.

Two fatalities also occurred at the Obuasi mine across 2020 and 2021.