KEFI Minerals makes progress with Ethiopia courts

The AIM-traded company said that, as previously announced and reported in the its statutory accounts, a claim for damages of $12m had been lodged against KEFI in 2014.

It said the claim was based on the impact of exploration field activities conducted between 1998 and 2006, a period which pre-dated KEFI's involvement in the Tulu Kapi project.

Those exploration activities comprised the construction of drill pads and access tracks, the board said, and no objections had been made until 2014 when certain parties from outside the Tulu Kapi district raised the matter and initiated court action

Those parties had since been removed by the court rulings from the list of plaintiffs.

The Oromia Regional Supreme Court had since rejected 95% of the claims as having “no basis in fact or law”, KEFI’s board said, and reduced the company's potential liability to $0.6m.

Additionally, KEFI had appealed to the Federal Supreme Court with regards to the remaining $0.6m on the basis that it remained firmly of the belief, on legal advice and as previously reported, that it had no contingent or actual liability, having already settled any obligations when the matter was originally closed by both the regulators and the land occupiers.

The Federal Supreme Court had now officially admitted KEFI's appeal after due review, and the case was expected to be heard within the next two years.

“It is pleasing that the legacy issues we inherited on acquisition of Tulu Kapi are being dealt with as one would expect,” said chairman Harry Anagnostaras-Adams.

“This applied to the inherited Reverse VAT tax liability KEFI had paid and has now begun to be reimbursed - and is now also applicable to the inherited exposure to any rehabilitation liabilities, which are also being laid to rest satisfactorily.”