The experts who approved the concession of Dundee Precious Metals Inc avoid the media

"A new gold rush took place currently on the Balkans, in countries such as Greece and Bulgaria,” warned Greek MEP Michalis Tremopulos in an interview for Klassa daily, on the occasion of the gold concession for exploration of the Khan Krum deposit near the town of Krumovgrad, granted to the Balkan Mineral and Mining company, a subsidiary of Canadian Dundee Precious Metals Inc. According to him, national and global investment corporations benefit from the economic crisis, from the corruption among politicians and the neoliberal views of the European Commission, “laying their hands on large areas in order to mine precious metals, acting in our countries as they did in their former African colonies”.

“The Gold mine concession for Ada Tepe was granted by the Bulgarian Government, thus committing a legal violation - neither an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA),  nor any evaluation whether the project complies with the Habitats Directive was carried out, “ Tremopulos stated clearly.

Unsurprisingly, the members of the Supreme Expert Environmental Council (SEEC), who on September 19 approved the EIA for the concession, avoid the media, showed an inspection of Klassa daily. “We looked for the permanent members of the council or their deputies, who attended the meeting. We were interested why they had voted for the preliminary project implementation,” explained journalists.

“The voting of the concession request was a surprise for us. It was not on the agenda of the meeting,” commented outraged council members. It turned out that the voting took place following the explicit request of Dundee Precious Metals Inc and the Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism. While the experts from the municipalities, affected by the investment proposal, were not allowed to attend the meeting, a whole delegation from Dundee Precious Metals participated in it,“ claimed someone familiar with the case.

The inspection revealed that many Chiefs of Directorates had not attended the meeting, but had sent their deputies. Some of them could not be found, others argued that they had been replaced by their colleagues. In the meantime, it became clear that even a whole department had not been able to attend the meeting.

Who then attended the meeting, where experts approved the preliminary implementation of the concession, granted to Dundee Precious Metals?

A week ago, Minister of Environment and Water Nona Karadjova returned the decision approving the EIA for review. One of her arguments was a doubt in the need for preliminary implementation of the concession. The official wording for the revision of the decision, however, was a missing document  from the East Aegean Sea River Basin Directorate, which is in charge of outlining the water supply zones. It turned out that the objection of Sebihan Mehmed, Mayor of Krumovgrad, was reasonable enough. According to her, it could not be decided whether the proposal affects water supply zones, given that the sanitary protection zones had not been identified by the Basin Directorate.

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