The proceeding opened in 2015 for the alleged irregularities in the award to Minorbis of the tender for the reopening of the Aznalcóllar mine continues generating expectations in Canada. The Ontario Securities Commission of Canadaan organism similar to National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) of Spain, requested collaboration between the supervisory authorities required by the Securities Market Act to investigate the status of the pending trial for the award of the Aznalcóllar mine, which was awarded to Minorbis to the detriment of the Canadian company Emérita.
The CNMV presented an application to Third Section of the Court of Sevillecharged with carrying out this trial and to whose Chamber the case was referred in March of this year, in the context of said collaboration and in relation to a “investigation – of a non-public nature – of which the Canadian entity is becoming aware and which could lead to non-compliance with the regulations on the securities markets of that country by the listed entity Canada Emerita Resources Corp.with a branch in Spain –Emerita Resources Spain– “, according to the letter sent to the Sevillian court and to which this newspaper had access.
The Spanish control body asks the Court to do so “report, if possible” some aspects relating to the so-called Aznalcóllar case. In this sense, the CNMV asked for information on the “situation of the proceeding initiated at the Court of Education no. 3 of Seville, in relation to the lawsuit brought by Emérita España for crimes of prevarication, extortion, influence trafficking and prohibited negotiation, in relation to the public tender for the assignment to the company of the rights to exploit the Aznalcóllar mine Minera Los Frailes (Mexico-Minorbis Group) and of which the Third Section of this tribune is now learning “.
This case is precisely that of the award of the public tender, which was filed twice and reopened twice also by the magistrate of the Court of Seville Mercedes Alaya, and in which 16 people are accused, mostly officials and technicians who were part of the the technical office of the commissions involved in the administrative process for awarding the tender for the reopening of the Aznalcóllar mine. A case in which the Public Prosecutor asked for the acquittal of all the defendants, after having asked for the investigation to be closed up to seven times, not detecting the presence of any crime in the facts investigated.
But the CNMV requires more information from the Canadian body. Therefore, he asks the Court to report on the “possible phrases or resolutions who, where appropriate, have come within the scope of that proceeding or that which is currently being examined by that court in relation to the matter in question, and the firmness or otherwise of the same“.
“Satisfactory” information, according to Emérita
Sources in Emérita explained to this newspaper that this requirement of the Canadian supervisory body is part of the obligation to verify that the information provided by the company to its shareholders correspond to reality and, in this sense, they added that they have received news from Canada that “I was satisfied” with the information received.
The trial against the 16 suspects in the Aznalcóllar case is waiting for the Seville Court to fix the start of the hearing, but given the collapse accumulated by the Criminal Sections due to the prosecution of macro-causes – and this process can be considered as a macro -process due to the volume of the accused and the complexity of the summary, the start of the oral hearing can be set in several months.
The Prosecutor asks for acquittal with a letter of conclusions in which he leaves no room for doubt when it comes to ruling out that there has been collusion in the awarding of the tender for the exploitation of the Aznalcóllar mine. The Seville Public Prosecutor’s Office, as it took into consideration during the investigation into this case which began in 2015, reiterates that sees no evidence of crime in the acts of the 16 defendants, which include all the officials and technicians who were part of two key bodies in the administrative process: the procurement table and the technical commission.
The memorandum presented to the Court of Education number 3 of Seville by the prosecutor Ascension Ocaña on 21 October 2021 he ratified the request for acquittal that had been advanced with another memorandum presented to the instructor on 21 September. I am already at least seven times the prosecutor has stated in writing that there is no Aznalcóllar case.
In its provisional statement, the Prosecutor lists up to seven aspects on which it believes that there is no criminal evidence. First, there is no evidence that the members of the contracting commission and the technical commission “will agree to arbitrarily award the competition to Minorbis and thus favor” the Magtel businessmen, the brothers Isidro and Mario Lopez Magdaleno
For his part, the private prosecution he exercises Resources Emerita, the company that lost the competition attributes to the suspects the crimes of drug dealing, prevarication, embezzlement, fraud, illicit negotiation and environmental prevarication, while Ecologists in Action, which exercises popular accusation, accuses the suspects of corruption, prevarication , trafficking in influence, embezzlement, illegal negotiation and environmental abuse, and also requests the adoption of precautionary measures regarding the suspension of the pending administrative procedure.
A third accusation, advanced by the company Mining industry of Andalusia, calls for the civil liability of the Junta de Andalucía, as well as of Magtel, Minorbis and Grupo México, to be declared, estimating the possible “damage” caused at € 7,195,426.
