Attorney General for Pakistan Khalid Jawed Khan has said that the Reko Diq case is very important for the economic stability of the country. He said if Pakistan loses this case then it will have serious implication for Pakistan's economy and its assets abroad could be attached.
"I will try to control the damage from the Reko Diq case," said newly-appointed AGP Khalid Jawed Khan in an informal interaction with the members of the Press Association of the Supreme Court (PAS) at the Supreme Court building here on Wednesday. In this regard, the attorney general along with Law Minister Farogh Naseem is to leave for the US on March 15. Pakistan has urged a US federal court to pause an Australian copper company's bid to enforce a $6 billion arbitral award.
The company - Tethyan Copper Co. Pty Ltd - won the award in July 2019, following a dispute over the absorbed Reko Diq mining project in Balochistan. The sources shared with Business Recorder that the court will be urged to consider the implications of the ICSID decision and the impact on development and poverty alleviation.
The mineral resources in Reko Diq are the collective resources of the people of Pakistan, including Balochistan. The government is keen to develop these resources to ensure that the development needs of some of the poorest people on the planet are addressed.
The World Bank's ICSID on July 13, 2019, announced 700-page judgment regarding $5.976 billion (Rs 944.21 billion) award against Pakistan in the Reko Diq case.
The ICSID award includes $4.08 billion penalty and $1.87 billion in interest to Tethyan Copper Company (TCC), a joint venture between Chile's Antofagasta Plc and Canada's Barrick Gold, the Chilean miner. In 2012, TCC filed claims for international arbitration before the ICSID of the World Bank, after the Balochistan government turned down a leasing request from the company. The litigation has continued for seven years.
Former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in the Maulana Abdul Haque vs Government of Balochistan held that the "Chagai Hills Exploration Joint Venture Agreement" (CHEJVA) signed between the Balochistan Development Authority (BDA) and Broken Hill Properties Minerals Intermediate Exploration Inc. (BHP) in 1993 was void ab initio.
The CHEJVA granted exploration and mining licenses to the BHP in the Reko Diq area, which is located in the Chagai District of Balochistan. Public concern regarding the CHEJVA increased in subsequent years as amendments were made to the agreement, leading to the involvement of the Balochistan High Court and the SC in the matter.
The Balochistan High Court validated the agreement, but this ruling was reversed by the SC. Aggrieved by this decision, the foreign companies that were party to the litigation referred the dispute to the ICSID for arbitration, which ruled against Pakistan in 2017, but until now had yet to determine the damages owed to Tethyan.
AGP Khalid said the "autonomy of [his] office" was his foremost concern, adding he wrote a letter to Minister for Law and Justice Farogh Naseem, seeking an explanation over reports that the government was trying to appoint a number of law officers without the new attorney general's consent.
He said: "I recused from the Justice Qazi Faez Isa reference case because I earlier had been approached to defend the judge's case." Khalid Javed stressed that he had no political affiliation with anyone. "It was my father who was associated with politics. Even if Bhutto's or Musharraf's case came in front of me, [I] will argue them with utmost honesty," he said.
"Maybe the prime minister nominated me because I am a professional. The judiciary has the same expectation [of honesty] from me as the prime minister does." "The prime minister has given me full freedom and assured me of his full support," Jawed said.
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