The Venezuelan government would have opted for the Russian mining / Canadian Rusoro, to implement the project of the Cristinas, which under a contract had been awarded to Crystallex to operate for several years.

At present there is great confusion about what will happen to the gold mine Las Cristinas, since the Ministry of Mines later denied these reports. What is the real situation?
"Nobody from the government, either directly or indirectly, has informed us that so far the situation has changed," said Robert Fung CEO of Crystallex last Tuesday during a special meeting of shareholders in Toronto.

Las Cristinas is owned by the Venezuelan government and Canada's Crystallex has a contract to develop the Las Cristinas project.

The Las Cristinas mine is considered one of the shells are not explored the world's largest and is located in the Imataca forest reserve in southeastern Venezuela.

The executive president of Crystallex told its shareholders that the company is in daily contact with "senior government" and confirm that they had requested an official clarification.

The former foreign minister and current ambassador to Venezuela in France Jesus Arnoldo Perez, said this week that we must be careful because there are a lot of false information on the subject. Perez confirmed that there was no formal declaration and that it would be reasonable to wait until after the regional elections this weekend.

Ambassador Perez noted that "it is not the policy of the Venezuelan government to revoke the contracts and everything will be clarified in due course." He added that "dark forces" have a negative effect on economic progress and politics of Venezuela.

Crystallex on its Web site continues to assert that the company expects to start gold production at Las Cristinas in 2010.