“Costa Rica doesn’t need to pay mining company, international court rules”, 04 June 2021

...Costa Rica will not be required to compensate mining company Infinito Gold for the cancellation of the Crucitas mining project, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes ruled Friday...The dispute in question has spanned decades. In 2008, President Óscar Arias issued an executive decree allowing Infinito Gold (through its local subsidiary, Industrias Infinito) to begin construction of an open-pit gold mine at Crucitas in northern Costa Rica...Costa Rican courts in 2010 voided Infinito Gold’s authorization due to environmental concerns. Since then, the region has been harmed by illegal gold miners eager to cash in on the area’s massive quantities of the precious metal...In March 2014, after Infinito definitively lost a legal battle in Costa Rica courts, the company filed a request for arbitration before the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)...Infinito had been seeking approximately $300 million in damages and lost profits, including interest, plus attorney fees and other expenses related to the arbitration...At the heart of Infinito’s claim before the ICSID was the allegation that, despite continuous controversy over the mine, the Costa Rican government had made numerous assurances — across several administrations — that the project could go forward...In its claim, Infinito blames much of its legal woes in Costa Rica on anti-mining activists and politicians, suggesting that they unduly influenced court and government decisions...Friday’s ICSID ruling says Costa Rica “did not deny justice” to Infinto Gold and that while Costa Rica should have “considered” how a ban on open-pit mining would have impacted Infinito Gold, the country does not owe compensation for the decision...

More information on this in Spanish here.