BY GRACE CHAILE
THE Court of Appeal has refused to set aside the freezing order, preventing Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) from exporting minerals extracted over the mining tenement allegedly belonging to Kalymnos Processing Limited, pending determination of an appeal.
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On June 30, 2023, Judge Petronella Ngulube granted Kalymnos Processing Limited an order of Mareva injunction against the mining giant.
KCM filed an application to set aside the Mareva injunction order but the appellant, Kalymnos Processing Limited raised a preliminary objection as to whether the said application ought not to be set aside for irregularity in light of the fact that at inter-parte hearing, KCM failed to appear.
But Judge Ngulube in her ruling on the application said she had no jurisdiction to entertain KCM’s application as she became functus officio after the delivery of the ruling on June 30, 2023.
“In view of the foregoing, I am of the view that the appellants’ preliminary objection has merit and the respondent’s application to set aside the ruling dated June 30, 2023 is hereby dismissed,” she ruled.
In this matter, Kalymnos Processing Limited director, Mr Dimitrios Monokandilos, stated the company was granted mining rights by the Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development under licence no. 21443-HQ-SEL and artisan mining right no.214119-HQ-AMR respectively dated November 23 and October 3, 2016.
Mr Monokandilos stated the said licences covered overburden dump 1 and stockpile dump 6 located on subdivision C of farm no. 927, farm no.1426 and farm no. 942 in Chingola and claimed the company owned the mining rights over the three properties and KCM preserved the surface rights having acquired the land from ZCCM in the 1990s.
The appeal before the Court of Appeal involves 12 million tons of tenements valued at US$2, 400, 000, 000.00 extracted from the said mining area between October 2017 and February, 2018, which KCM has allegedly not accounted for.
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