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Goldcorp’s Peñasquito mine, Mexico.
Canadian gold giant Goldcorp (TSX:G), (NYSE:GG) has more than enough reasons to suffer from “Monday Blues,” as it began the week with a group challenging its use of lands around the Peñasquito mine in Mexico and a US$3.2 million fine for transgressions to health and safety standards at its Argentinian Cerro Negro mine.
The Vancouver-based gold miner and Mexican landowners group, the Cerro Gordo Ejido, locked horns early in the year, when an agrarian court nullified Goldcorp’s lease of the lands and ruled they should be returned to the locals.
The world’s biggest gold miner by market value managed to win in June a temporary suspension of such ruling and has been trying to reach a settlement with the group ever since.
However, Reuters reports Goldcorp received Monday a notice from a Canadian law firm said to represent the Cerro Gordo Ejido group, which threatened with litigation in Canada for the properties in question.
Meanwhile, authorities from the Argentine province of Santa Cruz, where the company is developing its Cerro Negro mine, said the miner would have to pay about $3.2 million for breaching health and safety standards.
Opi Santa Cruz (in Spanish) reports that, among the irregularities detected, the company failed to provide enough drinking water to its workers, as well as to keep eating facilities clean.
Photo courtesy of Golcorp.
4 Comments
LAMB
As a Professional in the Canadian Mining Industry, I am ashamed of the way GOLDCORP has mismanaged it’s responsibilities abroad. There is no good reason for the Company to forego Health & Safety and the well being of workers. Good food, living conditions and safety are all normal requirements in Canada – WHAT MADE THEM THINK THAT THEY COUL;D GO BELOW THESE STANDARDS FOR INTERNATIONAL MINING PROJECTS ? ? ? (Other than greed- the bottom line – some manager trying to impress the Board of Directors?)
Max
Chill out on the anti corporate rhetoric. Drinking water and kitchens are subject to sign-off by often corrupt government inspectors. Argentina isn’t the DRC, but its hardly a poster child for ethical governance. Similar to the Mexican Ejido, it’s the local “corporation” being “greedy” and only caring about the “bottom line”. As in many jurisdictions the local officials line their own pockets first and little, if any, makes it to the community.
bailintheboat
My first reaction? Argentine government desperate for cash.
James241
I’ve LIVED in Argentina, and if they had ANY health and cleanliness standards, it’s news to me. You literally could NOT drink the water without getting sick, and in restaurants you often battled the flies to see who got to eat your food first. I have never witnessed such a cesspool of filth and corruption in my entire life.
Considering what I lived through, I’m willing to bet that the food and drink the miners are receiving is probably as good or better than they’ve had in their entire lives. This is nothing but a shakedown attempt by some government officials, to whom bribery and extortion are a way of life.
The Argentine government, especially the province of Santa Cruz is completely corrupt, and eyes the local mining sector as a tempting target for periodic shakedowns – I mean “fines.” I guarantee that if Goldcorp is stupid enough to cough up this “fine,” there will be dozens that follow it, as sure as the sun rises in the east, year after year until the mine runs out or is shut down and the local officials suddenly lose the goose that lays the golden egg and have no one left to extort.
Goldcorp should LAY OFF a number of local workers whose salaries exactly equal the fine, and point the disgruntled former miners in the direction of the officials who levied the “fine” as the cause for their sudden unemployment. Policies like this might end the endless barrage of extortion attempts – sorry, I meant “fines” by corrupt local officials. Nothing like a crowd with torches and pitchforks to change one’s behavior – or get oneself replaced by someone new who won’t attempt to rob the largest local employer to line his own pockets.