Monterrico Metals Torture: The Peru gov't opens its official enquiry

Well, it only took three and a half years for the Peruvian gov't to start caring about the case, but now at long last wheels are in motion. The power of photography, no?

Last night RPP radio reported that the Majaz torture case would be officially investigated by Peru's Congress. This is the full-on public enquiry method in Peru and although it might not move very fast it will cover all the ground and dig out all the details as it goes along, including the names and addresses of the National Police and Monterrico Metals security guards and bosses.

Intriguingly, the congresswoman in charge of the case, Marisol Espinoza, also mentioned last night that if necessary the case would eventually be forwarded to the International Commission for Human Rights. Oh, my, I'd love to see that arrogant prig Bristow up before the serious world beaks answering difficult questions, wouldn't you?

And as for you traders who care more about making a buck, a short in MNA.L would help your wallet and the greater good of humanity. The quicker this company goes bankrupt the better. Stick a fork in this pig cos she's done to a turn.

Petaquilla Minerals (PTQ.to) update: Liar Liar Pants on Fire

More proof (as if it were needed) that Petaquilla Minerals' (PTQ.to) management are bare-faced liars. With consummate timing, Reuters yesterday published this note entitled "Panama Petequilla gold mine to start production soon". Over at Bananama Republic the muck is getting thrown at the reporter Andrew Beatty for getting the story wrong. Quite right too, as it seems Beatty is taking the Simon Romero "fruity rum punch beats fact-checking every time" attitude to local current affairs. However Beatty in his laziness may have done us all a big favour. He actually gets PTQ's mouthpiece, Tom Byrne, on record and in print as saying:

"Petaquilla now has permission from Panama's environmental regulator to go ahead with the project."

Joy of joys, this is a confirmed and confirmable whopper. Big fib spotted. This is 100% false. Liar, liar, frilly panties on fire, Mr. Byrne. How do we know this? Because if you check back at yesterday's post we have the Panama Environment Ministry on record as stating:

In reply to your query, the Category III environmental impact study establishes requirements that the company must submit for evaluation and approval before the start of any works and before the start of operations. The company must also present additional environmental impact studies for activities that were not approved in the Category III.

This means that, even though it has ANAM approval for the Category III study, the company cannot continue its activities until it completes the additional requirements.

As they say in Spanish "Pez por la boca muere" (the fish dies (gets caught) via its mouth), because those additional requirements happen to be a list of 40 measures, including big stuff that takes a loooooong time for approval such as location and engineering of the tailings dump. Check back at Mr. Byrne's on-the-record statement, people. It's patently untrue and there's a word for that kind of statement; the word is 'fraud'.

So now we can trundle off to the OSC and register an official complaint about these scam artists who pretend they have a legal, decent, operative gold mine. And as usual the OSC will do nothing, because a bigger bunch of lilly livered apologists for corporate thievery has yet to be invented in the industrialized nations.

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Petaquilla Minerals: "Oops, we forgot to tell you that we're a bunch of lying shits."