... Tehmine Yenokyan has stated that there was a tailings dump pipeline failure, implying a cover up of the failure. While this was a lie, an accusation of a cover up of a failure and contamination may have caused not only reputational but also legal damage to any mining company locally and internationally. We have, as a first step, tried to engage and reached out to Ms. Yenokyan, demanding refutation. Her refusal to do so, left the company little choice but to resort to legal defense, since we cannot allow for this accusation to stay online unchallenged.

We would expect a responsible person to apologize and refute the statement. In that case there would have been be no need for a legal case. However, the pattern we observe, unfortunately shows this is not the first time Mrs. Yenokyan resorts to public statements she can’t support with evidence, since she was recently accused of slander by another mining company and lost a legal battle, with the court explicitly ruling that she has used defamatory statements against the company.