The public rapporteur of the Cayenne Administrative Court on Thursday proposed the “
annulment
” of two implicit refusals by the government to renew two concessions held by the mining company Montagne d'Or (CMO), keystones of the controversial Montagne d'Or mining project in Guyana, AFP noted.
The rapporteur pointed to the "
weakness
" of the "
convictions
" of the State, which had suspended this controversial mining project in 2019. The Compagnie Montagne d'Or, which had requested the extension for 25 years of these concessions, had filed an appeal to the administrative court.
Read also: Guyana: open war for the Golden Mountain
Relying on the overrun of the regulatory two-year investigation period, the Ministry of the Economy had implicitly rejected the renewal of the concessions, then legally putting a stop to the largest primary gold mining project ever. proposed in France, carried by the Russian-Canadian consortium Nordgold-Columbus Gold, whose majority shareholder is the Russian billionaire, Alexei Mordachov.
The public rapporteur also requested the "
re-examination
" of the mining renewal request by the administration within "
six months
".
The administrative tribunal will render its decision on December 24.
The concessions (with a surface area of 40 km2) are located in the municipalities of Saint-Laurent du Maroni and Apatou, in the middle of the forest, between two reserves with high biodiversity value.
CMO is considering the exploitation and treatment by cyanidation in a closed circuit of a deposit of 85 tonnes of gold.
“
We are refused the renewal of a title but we do not know why.
The real heart of the problem is the decision taken in this Defense Council where it was indicated that the project will not be carried out
”, exclaimed before the court the lawyer of the industrialists, Me Malik Memlouk.
The lawyer referred to the first Ecological Defense Council of May 2019, at the end of which the government announced its opposition to the project "
as is
" because "
incompatible with the requirements of environmental protection
".
For the public rapporteur, the "
weakness
" and the absence of "
relevance
" of the State - not represented at the hearing - to justify its refusal is a "
difficult point of the file
" which is "
not to the benefit of administration
”.
To read also: A project "Montagne d'or" bis in Guyana
“
How is such amateurism on the part of the state possible?
It is intolerable
", annoyed at the end of the hearing a spokesperson for Or de Question, a collective opposed to industrial gold mines."
Behind CMO, it is the whole mining industry that is taking action. game in Guyana.
Does the State have an interest in sealing this project?
“Asked the collective.
Contacted, the Ministry of Ecological Transition was not able to respond Thursday evening.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/M2AWO2WETN3GB6WTKYHKDTO3FY.jpg)
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/KMEYMJKESBAZBE4MRBAM4TGHIQ.jpg)
