New Film on Amulsar - "Amulsar-Amursar"

Starting 2011, the local population expressed opposition to the mining project in various forms. Jermuk spa town, the largest populated settlement in the vicinity of the planned mine, was not recognized as an impacted community for 12 years, up until 2016. A community is officially recognized impacted by the companies in their impact assessments after which they turn to the Ministry of Environment for organizing public consultations in accordance with the relevant regulation. 

This is the only large discussion held in Jermuk in 2011 which was not organized in the format required by the regulations on public hearings. You see angry Jermuk residents bullied by the company employees. Their opinion about operating a mine in their vicinity is neglected.

Gndevaz, Saravan and Gorhayk communities, recognized as impacted by the Amulsar gold mine project had conflicting opinions about the prospect of mining in their communities.

This is the year of 2012, the encounter of Gorhayk villagers with environmental activists and residents of Jermuk on top of Amulsar Mountain. Employees of Lydian Armenia "welcomed" the campaigners with posters calling on them to go to Turkey, a country perceived by the society as an "enemy country," while calling the locals bad names. Eight years later, it will become known that Lydian did not refrain from engaging investors from Turkey into its mine project making them shareholders of the company.

The International Financial Corporation (IFC) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) under whose patronage Lydian has operated, have a package of international standards on democracy, social responsibility, environment, anti-corruption, cultural heritage etc.

Their client companies have to comply with these standards whichever country they operate in. 

IFC started financing Lydian in 2007. In 2015, the IFC held 7.9% of Lydian International's equity shares in a total amount of 17.3 mln Canadian dollars.

The EBRD financed mine exploration and later bought equity shares earmarked for mine development and environmental risk offsetting. In total, EBRD invested 11.4 mln Canadian dollars in Lydian.

In 2014, Lydian's employees presented themselves as impacted community members, left the locals out of the public hearings in Gndevaz village obstructing their right to take part in public hearings.

Years later, a criminal investigation opened in 2019 will show that back in 2014, the Mayor illegally and for his own self-interest sold 10 ha of community pastures to his underage son at 810 USD and then resold it to Lydian at 310.000 USD, thus inflicting a significant damage to the interests of the community.

Hetq's investigation of land transactions shows that community lands owned by Hayrapet Mkrtchyan's relatives were resold to Lydian at incomparably higher prices, while the lands of ordinary farmers were sold at lower prices.

To put this in perspective, according to cadaster data, a piece of around 0.5 ha of arable land owned by Mayor Mkrtcyan and his wife, Karine Navasardyan was sold to Lydian at an equivalent of around 140.000 USD, while the arable land of a comparable size owned by Gndevaz resident Susanna Harutyunyan's household was sold at an equivalent of 2900 USD.

Mkrtchyans' extended family earned an equivalent of around 880.000 USD from land sales. No less sizable was the income earned by the inner circle of Gndevaz Mayor.

In 2014, around 4.5 ha of the community's pasture land was auctioned to Surik Grigoryan at an equivalent of 400 USD, who one year later resold that land to Lydian at a 100-fold price. Surik Grigoryan is a close friend of Aram Harutyunyan's family, he is an attorney and is the executive director of "Management Mix" consulting company.

"Management Mix" provides consulting services in mining and according to a 2016 publication by banks.am website, it organized discussions with the participation of Lydian, EBRD, IFC, other mining representatives. It is not excluded that Management Mix provided consulting services to Lydian. It is noteworthy that Nerses Kara-Manukyan, formerly associated with Lydian and IFC is a consultant-lecturer at Management Mix.

In 2014, two complaints were lodged with the IFC compliance ombudsman's office and EBRD's Project Complaint Mechanism; one from environmental initiatives and NGOs, the other from around 150 residents of Gndevaz. The complaints stipulated issues related to the improper assessment of impact on water resources, Jermuk spa twon, human health, as well as the heavy social-ecological harm to Gndevaz community due to mining and construction of cyanide heap leach facility. The residents of Gndevaz also noted of corruption risks arising from land sales. 

Although the EBRD rejected consideration of the complaint submitted by the locals and environmentalists, the IFC compliance ombudsman's office committed to investigating the issues raised in the complaints. In a final report published 3 years later, the ombudsman raised many risks and confirmed that the social-economic impact on Jermuk as a spa town was not assessed.

In May 2018, during construction activities Lydian employees damaged Gndevaz drinking water pipes and polluted Arpa river. This resulted in the local population's extreme action – blockade of the entry of Lydian employees to the area around Amulsar.

On July 6, 2018, newly appointed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan arrived in Jermuk to discuss a resolution to the conflict. In the helicopter, geographer and environmentalist Levon Galstyan presented one of the key findings of the IFC ombudsman's final report.

Although in its 2016 environmental impact assessment Lydian assessed demographic impacts on Jermuk to be caused by mining, no public hearings were organized there and as an impacted community Jermuk Municipal Council never signed any document on preliminary agreement to the project.

In summer 2018, Armenia's Investigative Committee opened a criminal case. Under investigation were many of the findings related to the negative environmental risks posed by the mining project that had been contended by experts over the years.

The only document that stood on the way of Lydian was the environmental and mining inspection decision adopted by the new head of the Environmental and Mining Inspectorate, Artur Grigoryan.

This decision was appealed by the company in Armenia's Administrative Court. In the meanwhile, Nikol Pashinyan dismissed Artur Grigoryan from the post of head of the Inspectorate and appointed Vigen Avetisyan, who took no action to protect the interests of the state in the court. 

The government commissioned the Lebanon-based ELARD company to carry out an impartial assessment. ELARD was allowed to only audit the company's documents, while earlier it had been announced that a comprehensive impact assessment would have been carried out.

Although ELARD and TRC experts found serious issues, flawed and unreliable data, often times, lack of data, Nikol Pashinyan decided to give the company a go and called on the locals to unblock the roads, while the Investigative Committee attempted to present the negative findings as positive.

The government added another 54.000 USD to the 400.000 USD paid for the commissioned review of the EIA in order to make additions to the review, as was stated by Pashinyan.