EcoLur
The pompous events dedicated to the commissioning of Teghout mining complex on 20 December were marked with the visit of top officials of Armenia and Atrsakh. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and government official attended the opening ceremony, who congratulated and the owner and managers of Vallex Group with success. Almost simultaneously two statements were disseminated in the press, which drastically differed from the official pompous statements made in Teghout.
One of them is Shnogh and Teghut villagers’ letter addressed to the Danish Export Credit Fund demanding to suspend the loaning agreement with the investor of Teghout project – Russian VTB Bank and to annul the agreement with “Teghout” CJSC. The letter has been signed by 57 villagers. For them the figures announced at the opening ceremony, for example, processing of 7 million tons of ore annually means that their village will get dozens times more wastes containing ore elements poisoning rivers and land areas.
Out of US $ 190 million, which annual value of copper and molybdenum concentrates, the villagers will get nothing, if not take into consideration miserable salaries to those employed at the company and the money for leasing community land areas.
Reminder: at the very beginning the land areas of the villagers were purchased at ridiculous price – 30-50 AMD for one sq. meter, while orchards were purchased for 200-300 AMD. Those who refused to sell their land areas, were made sell them through courts in line with the formulation of the governmental resolution “eminent public domain”. The letter describes in detail not only the violations of the domestic legislation, but also the violation of those standards and norms prescribed for the activities of the Danish fund.
Another statement was made by “Teghout Support” civic initiative, which particularly says, “… We have huge amount of factual materials, based on which we are going to issue a claim to court to stop illegal mining activities in Teghout and to award damages. We are going to submit the materials we collected to the criminal investigation bodies demanding from them to initiate a criminal case…Not having any guaranteed that in the presence of high-level corruption in Armenia we will be able to reach justice in legal way, we also intend to apply to all political forces, international organization and private individuals so as to deprive Teghout project of international financial flows…”
Note by EcoLur: The financial chain of Teghout project includes: “Teghout” CJSC, 100% shares of which are owned by offshore-based “Teghout Investment Ltd” registered in Cyprus. 100% of voting shares of the Cyprus company are owned by “ACP” CJSC, the owner of which is Valery Mezhlumyan.
December 23, 2014 at 16:39