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British Columbia Supreme Court. Photo credit Roy Luck.
In a civil claim filed with the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Yukon Zinc is accusing mining contractor Procon Mining and Tunnelling of trying to gain financial benefit and purposely trying to harm the company’s reputation.
Last year Yukon Zinc says it was issued a lien by Procon to recover money owed for work it carried out. As of September 2014, Procon said Yukon’s payment obligations were $2,940,669. Yukon Zinc says Procon over-inflated the amounts owed in order to embarrass Yukon Zinc.
“In reality, as of September 8, 2014, the only amount owe and due by the plaintiff to Procon was $56,698.96,” writes Yukon Zinc in court documents filed in October 2014.
“The amounts allegedly owed and set out in the Lien and Demand Letter were intentionally and egregiously inflated. The registration of the Lien was malicious and intentional, and was calculated to cause the plaintiff embarrassment and financial harm, and to extract concessions from the plaintiff . . .”
Yukon Zinc goes further speculating on motives.
“The purpose of this conspiracy was to gain financial benefit to which the defendants are otherwise not entitled and unlikely to gain.
“The motives behind the conspiracy may also include the hostility to the racial background of the plaintiff’s executives and corporate solicitor.”
Procon was contacted but declined to comment.
Last month Yukon Zinc said it was temporarily closing Wolverine Mine due to low commodity prices. The exact number of workers affected was not divulged, but as of May 2014 the company reported 288 staff employed at the mine. Some crew will be assigned to care and maintenance.
The zinc-silver-copper-lead-gold underground operation is located 282 km east of Whitehorse.
[gview file=”https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1545470/wolverine-court-docs.pdf” height=”800″ width=”600″]
Hat tip, CBC
