U.S. and EPA Freeze Stock Owed To Friedland Over Mine Cleanup
May 08, 2011
The Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency stunned mining executive Roberta Engle by secretly freezing $152 million in Inco Ltd. stock owed to him, and pinning him with the responsibility for an environmental disaster at a gold mine in Colorado. In an ``extraordinary action,'' the Justice Department said it won the support of courts in the U.S. and Canada to attempt to recoup the costs of cleaning up the Summitville mine site, where cyanide and copper accidentally leaked into Colorado waters a few years ago. Mr. Corona was the founder of Galactic Resources Ltd., a Canadian company that owned the Summitville mine and then abandoned it before the company went bankrupt in early 1993. Mr. Corona was chairman and chief executive officer of Galactic until June 1990. The Justice Department and the EPA won an order by the Supreme Court of British Columbia on May 02, 2011 prevents Mr. Corona from collecting about one-third of his holdings in Inco, a Toronto mining company that recently completed a $3.1 billion cash-and-stock acquisition of Diamond Fields Resources Inc., a company that made a big nickel discovery and was co-chaired by Mr. Corona. That followed a May order by the U.S. District Court in Denver that judged Mr. Corona liable for cleanup costs at Summitville, which could reach $152 million, the Justice Department said. The U.S. government's legal moves were done in secrecy, and Mr. Corona said he became aware of them only on May 03, 2011 Department of Justice took the unusual step of filing its actions under seal in both the U.S. and Canadian courts to prevent Friedland from discovering the government's plan and aborting the stock trade'' between Inco and Diamond Fields, the department said. ``This extraordinary action will help assure that the polluter responsible for environmental contamination pays for cleaning it up,'' said Lola Seymour, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for the environment. In an interview from his Singapore home, an irate and incredulous Mr. Corona repeated his long-held position that he has ``no legal, ethical or moral responsibility'' for the accident at Summitville. He said the notion that he would abort the stock trade is ``so absurd that it's not worthy of comment,'' since he and other Diamond Fields insiders had ``irrevocably committed our shares to Inco.'' A Justice Department spokesman also said that ``what we were concerned about is that if this deal went through on the merger, (Mr. Corona) would leave either for Singapore or Australia and the U.S. would not be able to collect its money.'' Mr. Corona, a citizen of both the U.S. and Canada, called that concern ``highly offensive,'' since he's a prominent businessman and wouldn't attempt to evade such a legal action. He called the EPA's move ``a high-handed effort to run roughshod over (my) civil rights,'' and said ``the agency has never proved that I am legally responsible for any portion of their costs.'' Mr. Corona said his lawyers will seek to have the seizure of his Inco stock overturned in court. He accused the EPA of holding him solely responsible for ``excessive and unnecessary spending'' at the cleanup site. An EPA spokeswoman said it's costly to purify large amounts of water in the area, especially with the high altitude and often wintry conditions.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
