The 'Mining Secrets' revelations on Solway and Fénix
- Social license and prior consultation
- Social license and prior consultation
- Audited
The 'Mining Secrets' leak (Forbidden Stories, 65 journalists, 8 million documents, published on 6 March 2022) documented payments of ~US$5,000 a month from Solway's foundation to indigenous councils taking part in the consultation, internal plans to 'buy leaders', more than US$200,000 spent pressuring the Las Nubes community, ~US$45,000 in 'strategic support' to the national police (PNC) during the 2021 protests, and surveillance of journalists. It is the only case where the cost of a social license bought rather than earned is documented with the company's own internal figures.
The research is written in English; quoted figures, source names and the titles of legal instruments stay in the language their source published them in.
Figures
- Payments to indigenous councils
- ~US$5,000/month per council
- Pressure on the Las Nubes community
- >US$200,000
- 'Strategic support' to the PNC
- ~US$45,000
Sources
Organizations named in the answer
Related records
- The death of State-licensed projects in Guatemala
- Guatemala's ratification of ILO Convention 169 and its obligations
- Absence of a prior consultation law and Initiative 5450
- Over 100 community consultations without binding force
- The Constitutional Court's four stages of prior consultation
- The missing consultation law as an investor risk
This layer is research: read from public sources by the archive's own team, every claim cited with the date it was consulted, and audited where it is marked so. It has not entered the verified store — no figure here was fetched back from its source or stamped with a retrieval time — so it wears no red provenance numeral and never mixes with the verified figures.