Aim-listed Red Rock Resources’ VUP project joint venture (JV) partner, VUP SA, was on January 14 issued an executory judgment from the Commercial Court of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), ordering it to pay $2-million as damages, with costs.

This follows an earlier judgment for payment of a principal amount of $2.5-million, representing 50.1% of the payment already made by a third party to VUP SA.

Red Rock’s initial claim for interest and damages of $11-million was heard on January 6.

As announced in 2019, Red Rock, through its local subsidiary had signed a JV agreement with VUP, formalising a JV over certain copper/cobalt projects in Katanga and requiring the setting up of a JV company.

The parties had also signed the statutes of the JV company. Red Rock owned 50.1% of the JV and of the designated JV company.

It recently came to the attention of Red Rock that its local partner VUP on October 20, 2021, served a Procès-Verbal de Saisie-Attribution de Créances (similar to a garnishee order) on parties including Kamoto Copper Company, claiming a principal sum of $15-million in respect of a purported surrender by VUP of the JV assets and some others, for $20-million compensation, to La Générale des Carrières et Mines (Gécamines), a State-owned company in the DRC, under the terms of a purported amicable termination transaction protocol.

Red Rock had been seeking advice in the DRC and in London on the various remedies available to it, and has obtained orders against VUP and others in the DRC which protectively seize 50.1% of the $5-million understood to have been paid so far.

"These awards in our favour of $4.5-million plus costs are steps in a process and do not put this money into our account, nor do they represent the totality of our potential claims.

“We now begin to move to the enforcement and extra-judicial phases of proceedings,” Red Rock chairperson Andrew Bell says.