Slovak News Back to the news
Medved: Slovakia Didn't Lose €15 million, We Never Had It
Wednesday 02 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 2 (TASR) - According to Environment Minister Jozef Medved, Slovakia can't have lost €15 million from the sale of its carbon-dioxide emission quotas as it hasn't had the money yet.
Medved was reacting to information in the media that the shady American Interblue Group, which bought Slovakia's carbon-dioxide emission quotas in 2008, will not pay an extra €15 million into the Slovak Environmental Fund's account. The first instalment of the additional payment, which is payable because the Environment Ministry has managed to include the Government's heat-insulation programme in the Green Investment Scheme (GIS), was supposed to be sent to the account last Friday, while the second part was expected to come on Tuesday.
"If we'd had the money in our account, we'd have lost it," said Medved on Wednesday, claiming that the ministry is currently doing everything possible to obtain the money from the Interblue Group. "According to the contract, we've taken all necessary steps to contact the trading partner and get the money. We approached them asking them to pay us according to the contract, one euro per tonne, €15 million for 15 million tonnes," said Medved.
The information that Interblue Group wouldn't pay the money was published in Hospodarske Noviny daily on Wednesday. According to the daily, the Interblue Group has stated that doesn't see any reason to pay because the materials that it received from the Environment Ministry aren't in order. "The presented projects concerning the heat insulation programme are not exactly defined, their CO2 (carbon-dioxide) emissions savings aren't quantified and a unified quantification of the pricing method still hasn't been approved," Interblue told the daily, stating that is why the company refuses to accept Slovakia's financial claims.
"I don't know anything about the documentation not being in order. In what way? I don't have any official statement yet about it being inadequate," said Medved.
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
