Entre Mares Accused Of Evasions To Avoid Pay $120 Million Lempiras For Restoration
Published by MAC on 2006-04-08Source: El Heraldo
Entre Mares accused of evasions to avoid pay $120 million lempiras for restoration
Honduras
8th April 2006
El Heraldo - www.elheraldo.hn
Mining company Entre Mares, subsidiary of Glamis Gold Ltd., took out a $30 million mortgage on 22,000 hectacres concessioned to them in 1995 for exploitation of gold in the municipality of San Ignacio, Francisco Morazan, in Honduras, on the part of the Bank of the Burmudas who loaned them U$20 million.
To Pedro Landa, coordinator of the Tegucigalpa Diocese, this operation is a ruse pulled by company executives in order to dodge their responsibility to restore the damaged lands, being that the owners of the financial institution are the same as Entre Mares. This would imply that should the 22,000 hectacres be confiscated, the mining company could refuse to complete the restoration measures because they are not the formal landholders of the property. Meanwhile, the bank could excuse itself of the same responsibility by showing that the mining concessions only oblige the orginal beneficiaries of the mining permits to carry out the remediations.
The reforestation of the lands will require some 43 million lempiras, but before that it is necessary to carry out a leveling of the lands devastated by the open pit mining, which would carry a price of 80 million lempiras (around U$6,3 millons in total), according to Landa. "What they (the owners of Entre Mares) don't want to do is pay (for the restoration work), and this is why they working towards this embargo," Landa criticized. Earlier fears are seeming to be realized as it is now known that Entre Mares is going to leave the country to reinstall its regional headquarters in Guatemala.
The financial entity has been identified as Minerals Finiance Corporation, based in the Bahamas, and according to the Diocese, and when this operation was initiated in 2001, the supposed manager was Eduardo Villacorta, a Honduran who is now the Central America regional operations manager for Entre Mares.