Ivanhoe’s Kipushi zinc mine in DRC officially reopens
The restart marked exactly a century since the mine first went into production.
Activists are calling on Canadian and U.S. securities commissions to investigate two Vancouver-registered mining companies for what they say is a failure to properly inform shareholders of conflicts concerning Guatemala’s Escobal mine – one of the largest silver mining projects in the world.
Canada’s Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP) has filed complaints with the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Tahoe Resources Inc. – which owns the mine – and Pan American Silver, which announced its intention to acquire Tahoe late last year.
Canada’s Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP) has filed complaints with the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
The complaints come six days ahead of a special shareholders meeting on January 8, when Pan American shareholders will vote on capital and share issuance resolutions – requisites for the company’s acquisition of Tahoe, which is expected in 2019.
The acquisition is significant: it will double Pan American’s silver reserves, and give the Vancouver-based company the largest share of silver reserves in the world, in large part because of Tahoe’s troubled Escobal mine, which has had its operations suspended since July 2017.
In September of last year, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ruled that Escobal’s operations are to remain suspended until the country’s Ministry of Energy and Mines adequately consults with the local Xinca indigenous communities – a process required under the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (ILO 169), which Guatemala has ratified.
Pan American told Business in Vancouver late last year that it will be following the legal path that has been laid out, will conduct additional community consultations and is confident it will be able to reopen the mine.
JCAP claims Pan American has misled shareholders by taking an unjustifiably optimistic view of the situation. It also argues the company has failed to disclose that the start of the court-ordered consultation process has been accompanied by conflict with Xinca communities.
(By Haley Woodin)
This article originally appeared in Business In Vancouver.
3 Comments
18wheel
If they are legitimate concerns, let’s hear them – if they are frivolous harassment and defamation let JCAP be charged accordingly. Indigenism is about the most accepted (and therefore the most powerful) form of racism today and needs to be relegated to the back of the bus with white nationalism, black power and feminism. The parasitical lawyer-activist groups need to be ready to lose reputation and assets where they weaponize these issues. We spent the last thirty years decrying apartheid in Africa only to have it advanced as a cause celebre in the Americas. The green mysticism and shamanism, pagans using climate eschatology to impose their religion, needs to stop – peacefully if possible, but I don’t know if that is any longer the case: decades of indoctrination and nepotism in our law schools and courts have amounted to an authoritarian sort of contest to see who can sbit the biggest pile on western civilization in favour of some socialist paradise that never has existed.
Art Easian
Clearly all the virtue leaders of the PDAC and MAC have been talking CSR for years but not demonstrating in the slightest how socialism stands in the way of prosperity and reinforces poverty. These clubs need to demonstrate to the world the historical benefit of mining as a foundation industry. There has only been a single effort; an article many years ago in the Northern Miner detailing the legacy of the Sullivan Mine.
A second aspect is the footprint. The footprint of mining is tiny. Contrary to the optical illusions of the media, all the mines in BC covered under legal reclamation amount to no more than 0.07% (7/10,000) of the province. When will the mining industry get it’s collective head out and up to proudly defend itself against the political forces that keep indigenous people confused and poor?
Mining fights well above its weight and has everything to gain and nothing to lose by going public before all the lights go out.
Art Easian
These activists, social and environmental, should visit that socialist paradise Venezuela, particularly Kilometer 88 where mercury amalgamation is used by the poor to mine the gold.