The Administrative Court in Skopje has made a decision in favor of concesioner for the mines at Ilovica, Euromax Resources which request for exploitation of ore was rejected by the Ministry of Economy. With this decision, the Managing Court has annulled the decision of the Second degree government Committee that last October rejected the appeal by Euromax for the rejection of its request for exploitation.
The Administrative Court has made this decision on the 31st of March 2020, but so far this decision wasn’t published at the court’s webpage nor any information was published in the media.
When yesterday Euromax publicly revealed the court’s decision on its webpage, the general public reacted and under pressure, the Court’s President Burim Sejdini issued a press release today that stated that the court has adopted this decision and that it is publicly available.
The ecologists from Strumica that are fighting against the opening the copper and gold mine Ilovica in the Strumica area, yesterday accused the Administrative Court in Skopje that it hides its verdict in favor of the former mine concessioner, the Canadian company Euromax Resources and that this decision has a major corruption background.
Meta.mk contacted the Ministry of Economy for a statement regarding this decision, but until the article was published, no reply was received from the ministry.
The DOM political party think that the Government’s decision to annul the concession agreement for the Ilovica mine was legally clean decision and are openly expressing their suspicions that the reason for the hidden verdict in favor of the Canadian company is corruption.
They call upon the State Committee for Prevention of Corruption to act and to investigate whether there is any corruption behind this scandalous verdict and who is involved in it.
Euromax stated that its goal was to build the copper and gold mines, and have been responsibly exploiting the Ilovica – Stuka mining complex. According to Euromex, the building of the mines is a “win-win” project of a mutual interest and will bring benefit both for the investors and the national economy in North Macedonia”.
“Its time for rebellion” published on their Facebook page the activists of the Healthy Valley organization as a comment on the situation with the Administrative Court’s verdict in the benefit of the concessioner against which the local population fought against with protests and blockades during last year.
