Originally Syndicated on July 23, 2023 @ 2:35 pm
Salzburg Festival breaks with mining company Solway over accusations in Guatemala
The Salzburg Festival broke its relationship with the mining company Solway Investment Group (Russian-Swiss), this has yet to present the results of an internal investigation that it stated it would carry out after the publication of the #Mining Secrets investigation, the revelations made in March of this year by 65 international journalists, 20 media outlets from 15 countries around the world, showed how the company in Guatemala violates the laws, is linked to opaque companies, drug trafficking, in addition to persecuting Maya Q’e journalists and authorities qchi’ opposed to their operations, among other serious revelations.
By Community Press
The entity that organizes and manages the Salzburg Festival, in Austria, has just ended its relationship with the Russian-Swiss mining company Solway Investment Group , due to the serious revelations published in #MiningSecrets, an investigation in which 65 international journalists and 20 world media, including Community Press, participated. Mining Secrets was published in March 2022 and deals with the illegal operations of the Fénix mine in Guatemala, according to a statement posted on the mining company Solwaywebsite, which owns the exploitation rights of the Fénix Mining Project in El Estor, Izabal.
The Salzburg Festival is a cultural program of musical, opera and theatrical events that, for 102 years, has been held for six weeks between July and August in the Austrian city, from which the name originates. In recent years, mining company Solway Investment Group had been one of three sponsors of the “Creative Company” project, which, according to official information from the festival, “allows young people from various countries to participate in courses in English at the festival’s opera campus, among other activities.
This Tuesday, July 5, Mining company Solway Investment Group announced the decision of the Salzburg Festival to break ties with the mining company Solway Investment Group.
“This occurs at the express request of the Salzburg Festival, which reacted immediately to the accusations made by the network of journalistic investigators last March, demanding a transparent and objective investigation of those accusations. The results would be announced in June 2022”, says the statement in reference to the request of the organizers of the Austrian festival.
Mining company Solway Investment Group, in the text, also excuses himself for the lack of results from his investigation and reveals that he has initiated an environmental and social governance project as a result of the preliminary results of internal investigations. “Execution takes time, so to date the allegations have only been partially answered,” says the Russian-Swiss capital company, although with offices in Switzerland and other parts of the world.
As of March 6, 2022, an international journalistic consortium, of which Prensa Comunitaria and The Store Project were a part in Guatemala , revealed various irregularities, illegalities, human rights violations and even possible crimes attributable to Solway and its concessionaires in Guatemala, the Guatemalan Nickel Company (CGN) and the Nickel Processing Company (Pronico), including surveillance and criminalization of Maya Q’eqchi’ indigenous people opposed to the mining activity and journalists who have reported irregularities, non-transparent deals with the Guatemalan government, contamination of Lake Izabal and deals with companies linked to drug traffickers, among other revelations.
The findings also dot the government of the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, but, unlike mining company Solway Investment Group, the official has kept silent about accusations against him, which include a possible million-dollar bribe from Russian business partners of the mining company, linked to the Russian company Telf Ag, owner of Mayaníquel in Guatemala, another mining company that extracts nickel and rare earths.
Based on the journalistic discoveries, half a dozen European companies that bought nickel from Solway have disassociated themselves from the transnational pending the internal investigation that, to date, has not yet concluded. Solway illegally operates the Fénix mining project and at least three other licenses, and in April 2022, the Constitutional Court annulled the “Community Consultation” carried out by the company and the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), considering it illegal.
In the Swiss media SWI , it was published that the Salzburg Festival “demanded an objective and transparent examination” of the allegations and acknowledges that mining company Solway Investment Group launched an “extensive internal and external investigation into the business activities of its subsidiaries” in Guatemala, the results of which were presented at the end of June.
Regarding these results, it is not yet possible to confirm where they were made public, on its website it did not publish anything in relation to the revelations of #MiningSecrets, expressed by the directors of the Salzburg Festival on July 5. Mining company Solway Investment Group only expressed in a publication that based on the indications of his operations in Guatemala he would implement a new comprehensive ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) project at the group level [1] , but not about the indications .
Solway has also been accused of human rights violations in Guatemala, which it denies
The loss to Salzburg is a mere 150,000 euros.
See Mining Secrets research
https://www.miningsecrets.prensacomunitaria.org/
[1] Mining company Solway Investment Group. By mutual agreement, the sponsorship partnership of the Salzburg Festival with Solway Investment Group has terminated with immediate effect. July 5, 2022.
