JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) of Egypt will, on June 19, hold the first hearing into LSE- and TSX-listed Centamin’s appeal against the Egyptian Administrative Court’s October 2012 decision, which declared the company’s exploitation lease for its flagship Sukari gold mine invalid.
Centamin said it would “continue to vigorously defend its rights to the Sukari gold mine.”
The Egypt-focused miner said that, in the run-up to the appeal hearing, the Egyptian State Commissioner's Office had produced a report containing nonbinding recommendations for the SAC.
“While these recommendations are not positive, the company does not believe they address the substantive merits of Centamin's appeal and, as such, the company's grounds of appeal remain unchanged upon the initial review of the State Commissioners report,” the gold miner said in a statement on Friday.
The company stated that the recommendations of the State Commissioner's Office were of an advisory nature only.
Centamin added that, in its ruling on March 20, in enforcing its decision to suspend the ruling of the Administrative Court, the SAC unanimously held that, “on the basis of the copy of the exploitation lease executed by the Minister of Petroleum presented to SAC, the annulment of such lease by the Administrative Court was likely to be cancelled upon the issuance of a judgment on the merits of the case.”
The company continued to prepare for the appeal hearing, while operations at Sukari were ongoing, pending the outcome of the appeal process.