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Hudbay purchased the Fenix mine in 2008 for $451 million, and inherited liability at that time for the actions of the previous owners, although it also faces allegations that its own personnel, including Padilla, were involved in abuses.
Since 2011, 13 Indigenous community members have filed claims in an Ontario court against Hudbay for negligence, alleging the mine owners had planned and co-ordinated their expulsions and funded the groups that committed the violence against them.
In 2013, a judge ruled the company can be sued in Canada for the events in Guatemala, and the case remains ongoing even though Hudbay sold the Fenix mine in 2011 for $170 million to Solway Group, a Swiss-based mining and metals company.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, Murray Klippenstein and Cory Wanless, have already reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the case, and expect to be back in court in Toronto this spring for another hearing on more discovery.
“Based on the evidence we’ve seen, we can prove a high degree of negligence in how they managed the Fenix mine,” said Wanless.
Meanwhile, in Guatemala, Padilla, the former chief of security and a former ranking military officer in Guatemala, was arrested, and detained. In December, he agreed to plead guilty to a role in the violent clashes.
According to interviews with Klippenstein and Wanless, a judge in a court in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, has now accepted Padilla’s pleas related to at least two separate incidents.
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