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According to Jeune Afrique Business + sources, Avima Iron Ore has engaged the Paris office of Clifford Chance. Its lead advisor will be Simon Greenberg, partner and member of the firm’s international arbitration team.At Clifford Chance since 2012, Greenberg was previously Deputy Secretary-General of the ICC International Court of Arbitration in Paris. In 2020, he worked with Eramet on the sale of an ilmenite processing plant ($300 million) to Tronox, allowing the French company to keep its mineral sands mine in Senegal (Grande Côte Opérations).Alexis Foucard will accompany him, a senior associate, a lawyer in Paris and New York, a Columbia University graduate and formerly with Quinn Emmanuel. Marie-Isabelle Delleur, a senior associate and an associate for five years at Linklaters, which she joined after studying at Sciences Po Paris, and Alix de Zutter, an associate who joined the firm in 2019 after completing his doctorate in Oxford, are also part of the team.Avima Iron Ore, a company created to operate a large mining project of the same name in the north of the country, is registered in the UAE. It is majority-owned by Core Mining, an Australian junior. The Congolese state controls approximately 15% of Avima.According to the authorities, the withdrawal of Avima’s license at the end of November was on the grounds of insufficient investment. Avima contests this, and on 9 March, it sent a formal notice to Minister of Mines Pierre Oba and President Denis Sassou N’Guesso and his Prime Minister Clément Mouamba.
Avima is asking for the license to be reassigned within 30 days. Otherwise, it intends to take the government before the international arbitration court and prosecute « individual members of the government, as well as third parties involved ».After Avima’s license withdrawal and that of Sundance Resources and Equatorial Resources at the end of November, the government reassigned them to Sangha Mining.As explained exclusively in Jeune Afrique Business +, this Anguilla-based company is protected by two shell companies in Hong Kong and was created only a month before the authorities withdrew the license. One of the two Hong Kong companies is legally represented by Alexandre Mbiam, a Cameroonian citizen and the son of Emmanuel Mbiam, a former member of the National Assembly of Cameroon.In December, we also highlighted the existence in the Brazzaville register of a company called Sangha Mine, the directors of which appear to be a Chinese resident and Pierre Oba, son of the Minister of Mines.
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