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Medved Urges Luetken to Prove Business Rights of Interblue Europe
Wednesday 03 February 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, February 3 (TASR) - Environment Minister Jozef Medved on Tuesday sent a letter to manager of Interblue Europe Jana Luetken in which he reminded her of the firm's failure to keep to an agreement made in Zurich, Switzerland on January 20 concerning missing evidence of the company's business rights to Slovakia's emission quotas, ministry spokesperson Jana Kaplanova said on Wednesday.
U.S.-based company Interblue Group, which bought 15 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from Slovakia in 2008, has still not submitted relevant documents proving that the transfer of the company's business rights to Swiss company Interblue Group Europe was a legitimate move. The documents were missing at the meeting in Zurich and the company was asked to deliver them by January 31.
Kaplanova told TASR on Monday that the ministry still expects the company to pay €15 million to Slovakia in line with the contract, which states that this sum should be paid vis-a-vis so-called green projects that were launched using the money already handed over.
Medved declared on January 12 that Slovakia will insist that the Interblue Group's legal successor should pay the additional €15 million. "We're going to take all measures possible to ensure that the matter ends well for Slovakia," he promised. The case goes back to 2008, when Slovakia sold 15 million tonnes of emission quotas to the Interblue Group for €75 million at a rate of €5.05 per tonne. The deal was harshly criticised by the Opposition, and received huge media attention. According to the contract, an extra euro per tonne should have been paid for the aforementioned green projects, but this didn't happen. Luetken said in early December that the projects weren't well defined, and that the company therefore wouldn't pay the outstanding €15 million to Slovakia.
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