16 December 2014
The Owners of Companhia Mineira de Naburi, General
Veloso and Diogo Cavaco, have noted the announcement by Pathfinder called
“Update re Mozambique Court Proceedings”.
This is the usual concoction of half-truths and misinformation which
Nick Trew continues to issue on behalf of Pathfinder to the public markets. He grows increasingly desperate to convince shareholders to support him in
his futile attempt to claim ownership of an asset for which he and the other
Promoters of Pathfinder, John McKeon, Gordon Dickie and Tim Baldwin never paid.
What
the judgement actually decided
The judgement simply overturns
the 9 December 2011 resolutions:
-
issuing replacement shares to Diogo Cavaco and
General Veloso
-
removing Gordon Dickie and Nick Trew as Directors of CMdN.
The Owners believe this
judgement to be illegal and in breach of Mozambique law and they have today
applied to the Mozambique Court to appeal this judgement. The effect of this appeal is to suspend
immediately the judgement until the matter is heard by a higher court.
Other
statements by Nick Trew
Nick Trew has made much of a
series of other comments, made by Judge Fatima Fonseca in her ruling, suggesting
that the Maputo Court “confirms Pathfinder Shareholding in CMdN”. This
is utter nonsense. As Mr Trew will
have been advised, Judge Fonseca has no jurisdiction to decide over judgements
already made in other cases before the court and therefore her statements are
completely irrelevant. Judge
Fonseca has made no judgement about the matter of ownership of CMdN whatsoever and
indeed was not empowered to do so – Nick Trew and the Board of Pathfinder know
this and they should immediately issue a statement to the public markets
clarifying this.
The
real facts
The
real facts, which are completely unaffected by the judgement of Judge Fatima
Fonseca, are:
1)
General Veloso and Diogo Cavaco obtained an
injunction in Mozambique preventing legal action in the UK until the matter had
been ruled on by the Mozambique courts – this Injunction remains in effect
2)
The Mozambique court has already ruled that IM
Minerals (and therefore Pathfinder) was never a shareholder of Companhia
Mineira de Naburi (“CMdN”) – this judgement remains in effect and is res
judicata - unappealable
************************
Notes to Editors:
In the High Court judgement
obtained by Pathfinder Minerals in October 2012, the judge correctly found that
the Share Option Agreement by which Pathfinder Minerals claimed to own shares
of CMdN was indeed an option agreement, under which the option could only be
exercised upon payment of the purchase price of US$10m, which has not been
paid. Accordingly, under Mozambique law ownership of CMdN shares never passed
to Pathfinder Minerals.
To this day, the Promoters
of Pathfinder Minerals, Nick Trew, Gordon Dickie, John McKeon and Tim Baldwin
have only ever paid a total of US$100,000 between them to purchase an Option (the
“Option Purchase Price”) over shares of CMdN. They never exercised the Option or paid for
the shares.
The
owners remain highly confident however that while it is likely to take several
years for this case to be finally resolved, they will be successful in
defending their rights of ownership under Mozambique law.
