EcoLur
At the press conference of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan held on March 16, 2020, a question was raised about the current state of the Amulsar gold quartzite mining project. In response to the question, Nikol Pashinyan said. "We hoped that the criminal case related to Amulsar would have been resolved now, or at least in the near future. However, the coronavirus played a negative role there as well, because ELARD experts had to come to a very important interrogation to answer many questions accumulated during this time, but due to the coronavirus they could not arrive. The fundamental formula for resolving the issue is the objective process and objective resolution of that criminal case.”
Reminder: the criminal case on intentional concealment of information on environmental pollution related to Amulsar gold-bearing quartzite mining is being investigated in the proceedings of the Central Office of General Department of Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of RA Investigative Committee, within the frameworks of which complex ecological, geological, hydrological, geophysical, chemical, construction and technical expert assessment has been appointed, which was commissioned to Lebanese company - Earth Link & Advanced Resources Development (ELARD).
The Armenian government paid $ 450,944 to the Lebanese company for the examination of the documents. As a result of the examination, ELARD noted a number of risks in its report identified in the environmental impact assessment report of the Amulsar project. Months after the publication of the report - in October 2019, Hayk Grigoryan, Chair of Investigative Committee, told reporters that ELARD experts needed to be questioned about their findings for clarification.
May 18, 2020 at 16:35