Micăuți Quarry became the target of pressure exerted by the manager of a firm and by political players, said lawyer Andrei Iosip. In a news conference at IPN, he noted the accusations made public by company manager Dumitru Ciobu, which were supported publicly by MP Nicolae Ciubuc, are false and are aimed at blocking the activity of Micăuți Quarry and at denigrating the quarry’s administration.
According to the lawyer, it is not true that the quarry works in the absence of permissive documents and of the right of ownership over the land where mineral resources are extracted. Such conclusions were reached by the commission of inquiry into the method of exploiting useful minerals following a petition filed by Dumitru Ciobu, the manager of SRL “Ex-Stone”, who reported alleged illegalities in the quarry’s activity. Starting with June 2020, a group of persons, organized and managed by Dumitru Ciobu, tried to illegally block the activity of Micăuți Quarry so as to enable SRL “Ex-Stone” managed by Dumitru Ciobu to purchase three lots of farmland that are 14 ha in area, at an exorbitant price of 114 million lei.
On July 18, 2019, Micăuți Qaurry was declared insolvent, but continues to work as usual and to clear the debts to creditors. When an additional agreement to the contract for the use of subsoil sectors for extracting mineral resources was signed, the necessity of modifying particular documents appeared and the quarry concluded a contract for the designing of the project of the mining perimeter with Iuvesvet Engineering on July 14, 2020. Later, Iuvesvet Engineering informed about inconsistencies between the quantities of useful mineral resources extracted de facto and the quantities indicated in reports. It was thus necessary to reassess the mineral resources.
Micăuți Quarry asked the state-owned enterprise Expediția Hidrogeologică (“Hydrological Expedition”) to reassess and revalue the mineral resources and signed a relevant contract with this on November 19, 2020. The extraction of mineral resources was performed according to the plan for 2020 that was approved by the responsible Industrial Security Inspectorate. To perform explosions in the area, Î.S. INMEX obtained the required permits from the Technical Supervision Agency.
Andrei Iosip said Micăuți Quarry, which is under insolvency, has 115 employees and its salary fund is of 1.2 million a month. There are no salary arrears and all the taxes are paid into the state budget on time.
Respectively, the quarry works in accordance with the special legal norms and can extract useful mineral resources in the limits of the mining area, based on all the necessary permissive and justificatory documents.
