The Armenian share holders of “Ararat” gold mining enterprise were surprised to learn that the Indian party didn’t want to work together as they had promised, but they ignored the suggestions of the Armenian side. And some time later they stopped organizing board meetings and started to insist on giving them the Armenian share of the company. The governmental share of the enterprise was fully sold to “Sterlite Gold” company in 2002, and the main share holder is Anil Agarval. The production capacity of the company has been falling down since 2002. The ministry of environmental protection has announced that the company has hidden the real capacities of the mined gold in 2005. The company was proceeded in the court and the parties came to the conclusion to make a deal. The peace agreement they reached in the court actually was very suspicious. First of all the explanations of the company officials regarding the reasons for this production decrease are suspicious. Even more, if we take into account the information of the company appended in their internet page, we will think that they don’t have enough money to invest in the company. Besides that there are evident contradictions between the declared information by the company and other sources of information (as well as international). Besides that they say that the existing mine holes are not enough to mine the planned capacity of gold and they have already started to dig new mines. All these announcements and activities seem to have only one aim: they want to build a new gold factory not far from the “Sotk” mine. As for their potential investors and gold buyers, the company gives them radically different information regarding the mines of “Sotk” and “Meghradzor”. Currently Anil Agarval promises to make huge investments, but only in case the government allows them to build the factory. But now it is not clear why they don’t build the mentioned factory now, which will not have any dangerous influence on the environment. According to the estimations of international groups the mines of “Sotk” and “Meghradzor” can be very profitable. This idea is also mentioned in the technical and financial assessment plan of the company, which has been carried out by international groups.
Currently, the prices for “Sterlite gold” company stocks are falling down from its maximum price (21 cents) in the stock market of London, which was registered in 2004. The conflict between the company and the RA government in September made the price of the company stocks fall down to 3 cents. Currently the price for the company stocks is 4 cents. This is strange, because the world prices for gold are rising rapidly. If we calculate the existing prices of the company stocks, we will see that Anil Agarval now can sell his share for about 10-12 million dollars. Accordingly a question comes up: what is this rich man getting out of all this? It is worth to mention that Mr. Agarval holds 45 % of the company stocks, the second biggest share holder is an American, and the rest of the small pieces belong to several thousands of other share holders. Definitely after making the prices for “Sterlite Gold” stocks go down, the “Vedanta Resources” company that belongs to Anil Agarval will buy all these stocks.
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