Between Crystallex and CVG there are mutual breaches of the contract, which complica the legal resolution to materialize the announcement of “nationalization” of the President of the Republic.

Natalie Garci'a
Photo William Urdaneta

More than 20 years it has the deposit without being exploded; the towns of the south wait with hope the development of the mine

What would be a possibility for the company Rusoro Mining is today, according to sources of the Ministry of Basic Industries and Mining (Mibam), something uncertain because the course of one of the richer gold mines of Latin America would be plotted by the “political interest and the form in which the forces move their cards in the next days”.

Therefore they at least indicate civil servants to it next to minister Jose Khan, who recognize the strong struggle between which they support the permanence of Crystallex and those that prefer the entrance of another company like Rusoro or including one third, but this time of the Venezuelan State that can be the administrator of the natural resources and the one in charge of the operation.

But before any possibility the CVG or in its defect the Ministry of Basic Industries and Mining, must solve what to make within the framework legal to terminate the transnational contract with the Canadian.

Legal frame
It is possible to stand out that this contract establishes a series of conditions from the Corporation and Crystallex that were failed to fulfill from the 2002, among them the management of the environmental permissions that allowed the operation of the deposit on the part of the transnational one, which it falls on the CVG because still the contract follows effective until traverse of Official Newspaper or the decree is demonstrated in opposition to.

The condition appears reflected in the ninth clause of the contract and says the following thing: “the Corporation will transact concerning the obtaining of required the environmental and mining permissions for the execution of the project. In any case the lapses that settle down in the present contract will not begin to compute but from the obtaining of these authorizations or permissions”.

It is by this, among others aspects, that the project the Cristinas has not begun, because the environmental permissions have not been granted him having only Canadian the possibility of making activities of exploration in the deposit.

Negative balance
The counterpart of this is that Crystallex, according to done denunciations to different organisms from the State, has not done the own thing as also demands the contract signed in date 17 of September of the 2002, as soon as months after the then Ministry of Energy and Mines gave its authorization so that the CVG operated the deposit.

These supposed breaches are related to the “stipulated special advantages” in the clause seventh in which Crystallex among others commits things “to continue with the technical support to the 5 associations of small mining organized installed in the area of Small Mining of the project”.

The clause - it continues indicates that the company would have to construct 30 necessary houses in the local community of Santo Domingo, training to the personnel of the community in handling of machineries and equipment for the mining operations, development of social programs to the benefit of the communities: installation and integration of the plants of white water treatment; construction of networks of sewers and improvement and paving of the existing road from kilometer 85 to the Cristinas.

Documents and testimonies picked up by Mail of the Caroní in reiterated occasions demonstrate that it leaves from these special advantages were not fulfilled to cabalidad. For example, the installed sewage network sank generating numerous member damages of the community of the Claritas.

The protests and reclamations from the miners and the community of the Sifontes municipality have not been made hope.

Indeed, nonconformity with the entrance of the transnational company took to the mayor of Sifontes, Carlos Chancellor, and William Saud, mining leader, to a judgment process that finished in jail sentence.

Hot Pope?

Whatever legal way in the case of being terminated the contract between CVG and Crystallex or the contract between the Ministry of Basic Industries and Mining and the CVG on the Cristinas, that it would give to place to the cancellation of previous, the State must make a decision exceeds what will do with the deposit and how this one will become the “panacea generating sea bream” of use and well-being for the towns of the south.

The announcement of the “nationalization” of the deposit that is 20 years old without being exploded would have to be made specific in the next days. Although one has commented that is the possibility that this one is given to Rusoro Mining such thing has been diluted with happening of the days and the entrance of a next company in the mine is a mystery, reason why will be to hope to that the national Government throws letters on the table to specify what will do with the Cristinas.