Loading ...Canada’s Barrick Gold (TSX, NYSE:ABX) has agreed to pay $20 million to a Chilean group in order to settle an arbitration case against the company filed last year after the miner, the world’s No.1 gold producer by market value, halted payments settled in 2005.
The lawsuit, brought by the irrigation association of Chile’s Huasco river, followed Barrick’s decision to stop paying $3 million a year to complete a $60 million-over-20-years agreed instalment, El Mercurio reported (in Spanish).
That fee was part of a legal obligation to compensate local communities affected by a project. In this case, the mothballed Pascua Lama gold, silver and copper project straddling the border between Chile and Argentina.
The giant project in the Andes has been shuttered since 2013, when a court ordered the company to halt construction over environmental concerns. Later that year, Barrick shelved the project citing massive cost overruns and nose-diving metal prices.
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