The case against you is this Tuesday Swedish Canadian company Boliden for him shed compared to 25 years ago threatened to kill it and polluted five million cubic meters. poisonous mud Agrio and Guadiamar rivers. Andalusia’s worst ecological disaster in April 1998, affecting 4,400 hectares of land of high agricultural and ecological value, is still not brought to justice. A quarter of a century later, the principle of “polluter pays” has not been fulfilled in this case.
The Board initiated definitive proceedings against the mining company in April 2022, after a six-year hiatus. vicious secret negotiations To close an 89m euro deal. The money they spent cleaning up the toxic sludge. Boliden, for example, said that the Junta gave permission to the pond where the mine wastes accumulated and then an army of efficient lawyers, That the Andalusian Government has been dropping one attempt after another to reimburse the public coffers.
Same mining company receives ERE funding 54 million euro. The mining company bought that millionaire item when the judge determined “unfairly and arbitrarily” that they had given social and employment benefits from the ERE fund in Andalusia. Financing the early retirement of 425 miners. This subsidy was granted in 2001, one year after the company declared bankruptcy. five after the disaster From Aznalcollar.
Boliden says he’s already paid
The company claims it was caused by this environmental disaster. 115 million direct economic impact euros and refuses to receive any compensation. They explain that they have already participated in the cleaning of sludge of highly polluting heavy metals with 80 million.
The Junta de Andalucía filed this civil action against Boliden after six years of negotiations that failed in an attempt to set an amount to reimburse the administration. The company is not responsible for the natural disaster and seeks a remedy. complex institutional framework to get rid of the rash. They claim that the company that was active after the raft broke down was Boliden Apirsa and after the creditors meeting they are now just Boliden. They even claim that the Junta de Andalucía authorized the sala to dump waste from the Aznalcóllar mine, which eventually exploded.
It took 25 years to come to that conclusion because there are other things behind it. a complex forensic maze, fraught with failures in the legal services of the Junta de Andalucía, often under the governments of the PSOE, and most recently with the PP since 2018. HE first attempt debug responsibilities go back penal wayA complaint was filed against Boliden by the courts of Sanlúcar la Mayor. The criminal case file in question was appealed by the Board and the Sevilla Court dismissed the appeals made by the Andalusian Government.
Sum of legal setbacks
Trial through criminal prosecution will finally take place in 2025, but the Board, through a decision of the Governing Council in 2002, filed another civil action to seek reimbursement for the cost of the spill as compensation for the removal of the sludge. The parent company was blamed. The board anticipates that spent 89.7 million euros. In the first phase of sludge collection (46.9 million), in the second phase of the same cleanup (14.6 million), in environmental quality control and monitoring (2.4 million), in research (5.2 million), in ecological restoration (16.5 million) , in technical assistance (2 million) and in health actions (2 million).
This civil road was not easy either. The claim was inadmissible in 2002 and 2003 and in 2005. Constitutional Court An appeal for the amparo by the Junta de Andalucía was found inadmissible. Faced with this chain of judicial failures, the Governing Council agreed in March 2004 to initiate an administrative procedure from the company to demand reimbursement of the administration for the costs incurred by breaking the raft. In this case, the Court of Cassation rejected the reasoning of the Board of Directors in 2011 and declared that the administration did not have the legal authority to declare the joint and several liability of the company. The controversial-administrative way was also not considered competent.
After a series of legal setbacks ten years ago, the courts Seville 11th Civil Court of First Instance, the person responsible for resolving the conflict, who at that time rejected him for lack of authority. By mutual agreement between the parties, it was decided to suspend the procedure in order to try to reach a possible agreement. The company requested that the State also participate, but the Ministry of Ecological Transition refused to participate in these contacts with Boliden. The negotiations took years to extend.
In November 2021, negotiations with the company already with PPs and Cs at the Junta de Andalucía were definitively suspended and it was decided to continue the civil case. This Tuesday, 25 years later, begins the trial of a world-shattering leak. environmental awareness from all over Europe.