The settlement agreement between the RA government and American company “Global Gold” has not been signed yet. To note, in March “Global Gold” applied to the International Court for Settlement of Investment Disputes at the World Bank to launch arbitration.
The company accuses the RA government and former minister of environmental protection in hindering its activities. On August 30 the company and the RA government signed an agreement to suspend the arbitration until the signing of a settlement agreement between the parties. The Armenian party was represented by the general public prosecutor’s office during the negotiations, namely by deputy general prosecutor Gagik Jhangiryan. “We expect that the settlement agreement will be signed in ten days after this announcement,” writes the announcement of the general public prosecutor’s office, which was made at the beginning of September. More than one and a half months have passed since that date, but the settlement agreement has not been signed yet. The parties don’t give any actual explanations yet. “It was expected that the issue of Karabakh would be solved soon too, but it is more than ten years that the parties are negotiating. Now we are negotiating with “Global Gold”. Our negotiations are still in process and have not finished yet. We will reach an agreement soon and will inform the media about it,” said Gagik Jhangiryan to us. It has been reported in the press that the exploration right for the Hankavan copper-molybdenum mine belonged to this company. However, “Madneuli” company, which belongs to Russian “Prominvest” company, bought the right for the Hankavan mine for 25 years in April of this year. Notwithstanding, under the law governing the mine field the priority right to mines vests in the company, which explores the given mines. One of the main assertions by “Global Gold” in the International Arbitration is recovering this right.