– The RA Economic Court recognized the two acts composed by the RA Ministry of Environmental Protection as invalid and this served as a basis for Indian chief manager of the “Ararat Gold Extraction Company” (AGEC), B. K. Sharma, to announce that whatever they do, they do within the law. Will you interpret this?
– True, on July 3, 2007 the RA Economic Court reached such a verdict, but the ministry principally disagrees because the court has not paid attention to the serious professional issues. According to us, formal circumstances are the bases of the verdict, and the main essence has been overlooked. On this occasion, we plan on appealing the verdict by the order constituted by law and in the fixed period by presenting the corresponding arguments.
– In any case, could we say that the violations revealed by your inspectors are thought up? By the way, Mr. Sharma claimed that other government bodies are disturbing them for no reason.
– No, our revealed violations are substantial. The imperfection of the normative, legal field doesn’t reserve the right to the person using the lithosphere of Armenia to exploit it irrationally. By the way, the expert invited from the Canadian “Stratcona Mineral” company shares the opinion of the Ministry of Environmental Protection on the unproductive exploitation of the Sodk mine on the part of AGEC. The expert principally agrees with the evaluations given by the ministry experts, and draws special attention to the fact that the mountain activities in the ores of Sodk have been completed by the exceeding of the volumes foreseen for the extraction of the mine’s real value and the reduction of volumes for the mine-digging project. As a result, the company, violating the “Annual project for development of mountain activities”, saved nearly 10.0 million dollars and didn’t provide the right conditions for the exploitation of the ore, including from the perspective of secure implementation of the mountain activities. Such an approach was shown during the exploitation of all mining areas of the Republic of Armenia. For example, on April 15, 2005, with the “decision of the RA Ministry of Environmental Protection and the joint group of authorized representations of the AGEC”, it was argued that during the years of 2001 and 2003 the number of gold resources redeemed in the ores of Sodk and Meghradzor was reduced to nearly 550 kilograms, for which the company was charged with an additional natural tax. As far as the issue concerning the other state bodies is concerned, as far as I know, AGEC has serious issues in the taxing sector. I am talking about an amount exceeding four billion dram. So, in the aspect of taxing inspection, I can say that there is not only “needless worry”, but also the fact of being consistent with the requirements of the law.
– There were publications in the presses that the “Vedanta Resources” company is exploiting its mines with terrible legislative and normative violations and that the company extracts the highest amount of minerals with small investments. Do you have such information?
– I don’t have such facts connected with foreign mines, but the facts that I stated go to show that at least in Armenia there is such a tendency.
– Do you exclude the expression of objective behavior on the part of the Armenian authorities towards AGEC, as Mr. Sharma stated?
– I don’t think that it is good to talk about objectivity. The functions connected with the surrounding environment, including the preservation of the lithosphere, are reserved for our ministry, and we plan on applying serious means against all the lithosphere experts violating RA legislation, and perfect the legal and normative/methodological field of the sector. There should not be the impression that the ministry is showing a strict approach exclusively towards AGEC. During the last years, more than 50 lithosphere experts who have violated, in any way, the requirements or contractual obligations of the Republic of Armenia, have been deprived of their mining rights and/or have been received administrative fines.