From the initial Morila acquisition announcement:"Morila SA has not been subject to a tax audit for 3 years and there is a risk there may be some liability arising to Morila SA after completion and when that audit is undertaken"
From that I doubt Barrick/Anglo would be responsible for it. In our DD we would have looked at the Morila SA accounts, seen the $19m profit, seen whatever tax was paid and were obviously happy with it. We would also have been aware of other claims the tax dept had made against Randgold, it's all in their annual reports. Every mining company in Africa would get these tax claims, eventually it goes away with no loss of face.
As i said in my previous post, the most 2017 can be is $4.6m and that's assuming they paid no tax at all which would have stood out like dogs b... in the DD.
We have TVA tax credits which the market probably gives us no credit for, so in the scheme of things, this is very minor, but may present some buying opportunity after the halt.
The Barrick Dec 31 2019 Information form (Canadian) quoted this:
"The tax exposures to be resolved for 2014 through 2016 total $92 million, and remain under discussion with the State of Mali."
A lot of that was from Randgold. Bearing in mind Randgold produced 1.3m oz in 2017 - just 1 year, plus what Barrick produce in Mali and the disputed amount is $92m over all those millions of ounces, I think it is fair to assume our disputed figure based on a small (by comparison) 70k oz will be insignificant.