Environmentalists ask Prosecutor General's Office to examine Mego Gold's license to develop Tukhmanuk deposit

 A group of environmentalists have asked the Prosecutor General's Office to examine Mego Gold's license to develop the Tukhmanuk deposit.

Head of Ecological Academy NGO Greta Gabrielyan told journalists on Friday that the license given to Mego Gold (subsidiary of Global Gold Mining) in 2005 said that the company could develop Tukhmanuk using the opencast method for just two years and then had to switch to underground mining. But the company still uses the former method.

Gabrielyan said that Dec 28 2012 the Energy and Natural Resources Ministry granted Mego Gold a mining allotment certificate saying that it could use the surface mining method.

"It was an illegal decision as such an act cannot provide such a right unless preceded by special legislative procedures. No single public or expert discussion has been held on this matter in the last two years.  Even more no legal framework has been adopted since 2005 to allow the deposit's opencast development. So, we have urged the Prosecutor General's Office and the National Security Service to inquire into this situation," Gabrielyan said.

Early this year the Union of Greens of Armenia and the Public Environmental Alliance sent Global Gold Mining CEO Van Krikorian an open letter demanding that the company stop its activities in Armenia and pay the damages caused by its Tukhmanuk project.

Director of the Armenian Branch of Global Gold Mining Ashot Poghosyan told ArmInfo later that the charges were groundless and that they monitored the area on a constant basis.

In Apr 2013 the Environment Protection Ministry dismissed Mego Gold's project to build a third tailing dump near Tukhmanuk.