RE:RE:Second court hearing to be held on 7/13/2022I was trying to be conservative in my post, to avoid putting any unnecessary anxiety on shareholders if things take more time than expected. Once the hearing has taken place, the sentence is generally out in between 15 and 30 days, so I believe the appeal resolution would be late July or early August.
The first court decision took more time because there were some disruptions in the otherwise normal process. Before resolving the case, judge Hermoza Castro had to consolidate the two original cases (covering 15 and 17 concessions, respectively), so from time to time she had to decide about certain formal issues, "legacy incidents" let's call them.
Now, in a previous post yesterday I mentioned that if the decision is not favorable to $LI, it still has the right to appeal before the Supreme Court. Well, the same applies to the defendants Ingemmet and Minem. And a number of alternatives could open up. The Supreme Court, for example, could change the decision on Ingemmet and Minem's favor, or perhaps change the decision in a partial way, or even decide that a new trial must be carried out from scratch.
Will the defendants appeal before the Supreme Court? I don't think so, because to file that appeal they would need to prove that a serious infraction of the Constitution or a blatant violation of the procedures has taken place during the trial, which is obviously not the case here. As I also remarked in my already mentioned previous post, judge Hermoza Castro motivated the decision in a way that it didn't contradict Ingemmet's main argument: that the lack of timely accreditation of payments is a cause of expiration of the concessions. This also means that the first court decision (assuming it's conffirmed in second instance) doesn't constitute a dangerous precedent for Ingemmet's operations. Had judge Hermoza Castro decided that the lack of timely accreditation is not a cause of expiration, anybody could use that decision to present their accreditation whenever they want, and so Ingemmet would feel quite compelled to further appeal the unfavorable decision.
Looking at the company recent call to a Speacil Meeting on August 22nd, I can't help believing that it's somehow related to the expected favorable second court decision; I believe that on that day shareholders will vote and decide to spin off the Macusani uranium asset to a separate company. I think the reason why they didn't do that before is because they wanted first a definitive resolution of the concessions issue; combined with the uranium regulatory uncertainty, it would have been too much weight to put on a newly created company. As part of the legal team that is advicing Macusani Yellowcake through the judicial process, there are lawyers that have worked inside Ingemmet, who may have better insight to believe that this second court decision, if favorable, will be final.