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Nagy: Slovakia Won't Try to Acquire €15 million From Interblue by Court
Thursday 16 December 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 16 (TASR) - Slovakia won't try to obtain an additional payment of €15 million from the notorious carbon-dioxide emission quota deal with the Interblue Group via legal action, Environment Minister Jozsef Nagy (Most-Hid) indicated on Thursday.
"We won't take action in commercial-legal terms, as we can't see any rational basis vis-a-vis the money being returned. We're transferring this directly to the criminal-law level," said Nagy, adding that he is meeting the special prosecutor about the case this week.
In 2008, Slovakia sold 15 million tonnes of emission quotas to the Interblue Group for €75 million at a rate of €5.05 per tonne. According to the then opposition, the media and the current ministry management, this sum was around half of what it should have been. In addition, an extra euro per tonne should have been paid by the company for green projects (€15 million in total), but this money wasn't forthcoming.
Slovakia's emission quotas ended up in the possession of Japanese companies. According to former Interblue Group project manager Rastislav Bilas, they were sold for around €8 per tonne. The now non-existent Interblue Group, whose headquarters were allegedly located in a garage in the U.S.A., claimed that it had transferred its rights to a company called Interblue Group Europe based in Switzerland. Interblue Group Europe's representatives said in March that they, unlike the ministry, still view the contract as valid. Then-minister Jozef Medved (a Smer-SD nominee) said that Interblue Group no longer existed and that the ministry hadn't received any evidence that the rights had actually been transferred to Interblue Group Europe.
According to Nagy, the emissions quota scandal has harmed Slovakia's international reputation. "Respectable buyers have a rather reserved attitude towards this," said Nagy, adding that Japan's Ambassador to Slovakia Yoshio Nomota has told him that Japanese companies have a problem when it comes to Slovakia's quotas.
Slovakia currently has 27 million tonnes of CO2 emission quotas available with more than ten companies expressing interest in them. The companies are playing a waiting game, however, claimed Nagy. There are signals that it won't be possible to carry the quotas over to the period after the Koyto Protocol terminates, which means that their prices are falling on international markets.
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