Bogota, April 20, 2023
Regarding to the information that has circulated in media outlets about the statements made by Jairo de Jesús Charris to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Drummond Ltd. strongly states:
- Drummond Ltd. is up against a cartel of false witnesses, promoted by American and Colombian lawyers who wanted to get rich, but couldn´t, by suing the Company in the United States. What they have achieved is for these paramilitaries to repeat their lies before the Prosecutor’s Office, and now before the JEP.
- Jairo de Jesús Charris is lying when he accuses Drummond Ltd. and its executives of being involved in homicides perpetrated by the AUC. He lies to benefit himself. First, he received substantial payments from attorneys attempting to gain money in a lawsuit in the U.S. The American judge reviewing evidence of those payments found they were consistent with “witness bribery and suborning perjury.” Now, Charris is spreading his lies to the JEP so that it grants him his freedom.
- Charris tried to extort money from Drummond, and, as a result of the Company denouncing this fact to the Prosecutor´s Office, and collaborating with it, the authorities were able to locate Charris´ hiding place, and capture him. His expected animosity and desire for revenge on this subject against Drummond Ltd. and its managers is therefore evident.
- The lawyers making these payments intended to win the lawsuits that they filed in the United States against Drummond Ltd. However, the result was not what they expected, since the American juries and judges have not given credence to their false claims, and have dismissed each of these lawsuits.
- The evidence includes emails and proof of bank transfers made periodically, for more than three and a half years, to Charris and his family, in amounts ranging between one and a half and three million pesos. Charris and his family have received over 60 million pesos.
- In Colombia, Drummond filed a complaint with the Prosecutor´s Office, asking it to investigate several paramilitaries and their allies who have given false testimony during judicial processes in exchange for money and gifts.
- As it happened with Charris, until 2011, Jaime Blanco Maya, former food contractor at Drummond’s mines, had given three statements when asked by the investigating authorities, stating that neither Drummond nor its executives had had any relationship with the paramilitary groups. However, Blanco received payments of over $120 million pesos and, since then, he changed his statement in order to implicate Drummond and its executives in alleged alliances with paramilitary groups. In fact, Blanco refused to sign a statement changing his story until he had received money.
- All of this evidence has been delivered to the False Witnesses unit of the Prosecutor´s Office in Colombia.
- The JEP has been improperly manipulated by Blanco, who had been convicted and sentenced by the regular justice system for the homicide of members of the Sintramienergética union. Seeking economic and legal benefits, he has given false information to the authorities after receiving a lot of money, as previously stated, through US attorneys and others. With the JEP, Drummond has also presented multiple documents, on eight different occasions since 2021, demonstrating the falsehood of the statements made against the Company and its managers, but to date the JEP has not issued a ruling.
- Charris and Blanco´s lies constitute procedural fraud in order to get personal benefits, as retaliation because Drummond has not yielded to the illegal financial demands of those who have given false testimony to the authorities.
Drummond Ltd. reiterates that it does not have and has not had any links with organizations outside the law, regardless of their origin. Since the beginning of its operations in Colombia, at the end of the 1980s, the company has adhered to the laws that govern the country, and has adopted the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, as well as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
The company will continue to cooperate with the authorities in the investigations that are being carried out, proving its innocence as a company and that of its executives, given the aforementioned accusations.