[miningmx.com] — CHILE’S Codelco has failed in its bid to seize more
than $200 million in profits from Anglo American operations in the South American
country over which it claims part ownership.
In a resolution handed down Wednesday, a civil court in Santiago rejected a request
submitted last week by the state-owned mining company. The request asked to place
profits from Anglo American’s Chilean subsidiary Anglo American Sur SA into an escrow
account and install an official named by the courts to oversee the running of the
business.
At stake is almost half of the $409m which Anglo American Sur decided earlier this
month to distribute in dividends to its shareholders.
The two firms are locked in a battle over 49% of Anglo American Sur, which Codelco
claims it is owed under a historic option contract: Anglo is seeking to have the option
annulled after pre-emptively selling 24.5% of the shares to Japan’s Mitsubishi.
The business includes Anglo American’s flagship Los Bronces operation where it
recently spent $2.7bn to expand the asset into one of the world’s biggest copper
mines.
The ruling marks a setback in Codelco’s attempt to gain control over the stake; but
the failure this week only reflects its success in earlier rounds of the legal battle.
The 14th Civil Court ruled that it was unnecessary to take precautionary measures
over the profits at Anglo American Sur as Anglo American was already prohibited from
making further sales of shares of the stake in AAS it still owns.
Codelco dismissed any notion that the ruling will have any bearing the final outcome
of the legal dispute.
Still Anglo personnel in Chile were elated by a “major triumph’ in a battle that has
often not gone their way.
“Anglo American believes that the measures sought by Codelco had no justification
whatsoever and sought to improperly interfere with the operation of Anglo American’s
business interests in Chile,’ the company said.
But Codelco shrugged off the accusation of meddling and said that it had only taken
the legal step to find out the size of the profits that Anglo staff had refused to reveal
in earlier hearings.
Questioned in court on April 3, Anglo American Chile’s top executive Miguel Angel
Duran failed to recall the size of the dividend, “even though the decision had been
adopted just three days prior to giving the statement’, Codelco said, adding that it
will deduct 49% of the dividend from the price it “will pay when it wins the case and
the disputed shares are handed over’.
After urging Codelco and its government masters earlier this year to push for a
negotiated settlement, Anglo American appears to have resigned itself to a long haul
through the Chilean courts to defend its rights.
That process, with recourse to appeal and supreme courts, could take up until the end
of 2014.
If so, Wednesday’s round is just the latest, with many still to come.
