Former Bolivian President Carlos Mesa (2003-2005) charged this Thursday against the ruling party and the Public Ministry for a process reactivated against him by an international ruling that forced the Bolivian State to pay a millionaire fine to a Chilean company in which the opponent claims to have no responsibility.
Mesa explained at a press conference in La Paz the background of the case known as Quiborax a day after a joint committee of Parliament approved the start of a trial of responsibilities against him for alleged resolutions contrary to the Constitution, breach of duties and uneconomic conduct.
“They are going to prosecute me for having nationalized the Uyuni salt flat and for having expelled a pirate and illegal company from Bolivia,” said the former president.
In 2004, during the Mesa government, mining concessions were revoked in the Uyuni salt flat to exploit ulexite for the company with majority Chilean capital Non Metallic Minerals, a partner of the Chilean Quiborax.
The firms filed a dispute with the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which in 2018 closed the case in favor of the claimants on the grounds that the revocation was not in accordance with the law.
The Bolivian State then signed an agreement to compensate Chilean companies with 42.6 million dollars.
Background
Mesa explained that during his administration he decided to nationalize the Uyuni salt flat, declaring “the entire salt crust” of that reservoir, one of the world’s main lithium deposits, “state dominance.”
According to the former president, it was also detected that “Non Metallic Quiborax had received an illegal concession”, in addition to not paying taxes, not respecting environmental issues and declaring exports “much lower than what it was really sending abroad”.
The former president accused the firm of having falsified its act of formation to “establish a foreign shareholder majority” and go to the ICSID, an action of which, according to Mesa, the then Government of Evo Morales was aware and before which “he did not make the claim he had to make.”
Mesa recalled that the Morales Administration rejected a first agreement to compensate the firm with 3 million dollars, then came a lawsuit that claimed 27 million and finally the then Government agreed with the plaintiffs the payment of 42.6 million.
The former president therefore pointed to former prosecutors Héctor Arce Zaconeta and Pablo Menacho, the former head of Mining César Navarro and the then Minister of Economy and current president, Luis Arce.
Mesa said that at the time he presented several “indictments” against the former officials that were rejected “because the Public Ministry is at the service of the Government” of the Movement to Socialism (MAS).
Presidential Amnesty
He also recalled that in 2018, Evo Morales decreed an amnesty endorsed by the Legislature for him and for former President Jorge Quiroga in court cases that were pending for them to collaborate freely in the Bolivian maritime case before Chile.
Mesa rejected the amnesty at the time, considering that it meant that his guilt was presumed in the Quiborax case, which, he said on Thursday, “does not eliminate the obligation to comply” with that decree.
For the former president, Morales gave him amnesty “to protect and guarantee impunity” for his former collaborators whom he accused of being the “true authors of the crime of complicity and pledge of 42 million dollars in favor of a pirate company.”
He added that he will again file accusations against these former officials when the country has “a credible judicial system.”
Mesa’s party believes that the progress of the trial against the former president in the Legislature seeks to “pressure” the opposition to get trials of responsibilities of interest of the MAS approved, including the processes against former interim president Jeanine Áñez.
