Amid TPP Fight, El Salvador Mining Case Shows Danger of Corporate Tribunals

[eridani]

Wondering why any Democrat would be in favor of paying corporations to contaminate drinking water.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/05/11/amid-tpp-fight-el-salvador-mining-case-shows-danger-corporate-tribunals

OceanaGold, which purchased the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining in 2013, is suing El Salvador—the most water-stressed country in the region—for an amount equivalent to 5 percent of its gross domestic product for refusing to grant it a permit to put a gold mine into operation.

El Salvador's government says the mining company never complied with the minimum legal requirements for obtaining a permit. In addition, there are serious concerns about the social and environmental impacts of mining in a nation where more than 90 percent of the surface water supply is already contaminated, and more than 50 percent of the 6.3 million people depend on one fragile watershed for drinking water.

But in the wake of the permit rejection—and after the first of three successive Salvadoran Presidents committed to an effective moratorium on new mining projects—Pacific Rim filed a lawsuit in 2009 before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a little-known World Bank-based tribunal.

Since purchasing Pacific Rim in 2013, Australia's OceanaGold has "stubbornly continued with the case," according to a press release from MiningWatch Canada. The company claims that under the Central American Free Trade Agreement, it has the right to sue the Salvadoran government for passing a law that threatens its bottom line.

[Hoyt]

1. So this case has been going on for 6 years and has gotten nowhere.

Pacific Rim still doesn't have a permit, so life sucks for them. It has almost no assets, and little if any income or prospects. Ad of 2013, it was near bankrupt.

But, yeah, it shows how those tribunals -- operating under United Nation and WTO -- are corrupt.

[BrotherIvan]

2. And tying up the country and costing them a pretty penny to fight off the case

If you are a person who works for a living and not an investor, your slavish defense of the TPP is bizarre to say the least. Why can't a country protect its people from corporations who want to threaten their water supply? Why isn't that the final word? What on earth is the benefit except profit??

[Enthusiast]

4. What is bizarre is his passion in defending this piece of shit trade deal.

Well, I guess that's what you said. I said it again.

[Hoyt]

7. Yet, these countries would sign it again in a second. Why? They want

and need the foreign investment and no one is going to do that if a country can expropriate their plant, etc., or treat their own companies better.

[JDPriestly]

3. This case has been going on for 6 years at unbelievably enormous

cost for the not very rich and not very big country of El Salvador.

The point for Pacific Brim in bringing this litigation is not necessarily to win in court but to push El Salvador into a generous settlement. You see litigation is not always about who is right and who is wrong. Sometimes it is about revenge, and perhaps in this case about pushing a small country around and punishing it for standing up for the rights of its people. I don't know the case well enough to be sure, but I do know what I am talking about with litigation. The cost of defending a case can push a party to settle even when that party knows it is right.

Corporations should insure themselves against losses when they invest through hedges and other means. They should not be able to go to an international court as Pacific Brim is doing. El Salvador is a sovereign nation that should be able to act in the best interests of its people without being harassed by some snicker-doodle corporation that has more money than common sense.

[Enthusiast]

5. Precisely.

This is a prime example of why we can not allow the TPP.

[Hoyt]

8. Yet El Salvador would sign it again.

[cali]

6. justice denied