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AVZ Minerals will resume legal proceedings against DRC in dispute over disputed Lithium deposit

AVZ Minerals will resume legal proceedings against DRC in dispute over disputed Lithium deposit

AVZ Minerals, an Australian company, announced on Tuesday that it would resume legal proceedings against the Democratic Republic of Congo over mining rights for the Manono Lithium deposit. The parties had been unable to settle a dispute regarding the deposit.

Unresolved issues could pose a problem for the plans of California-based metals company KoBold Metals to purchase AVZ Minerals stake in one world's biggest hard rock lithium deposits.

AVZ originally held the permit for the Manono Project, but the DRC mines ministry revoked it in 2023 on the grounds that the project hadn't advanced fast enough.

The rights were granted later to a unit of Zijin Mining, which prompted AVZ, to seek relief from both the International Court of Arbitration of International Chamber of Commerce and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

In late May, the AVZ temporarily suspended the ICSID proceedings after the U.S. Government encouraged the parties to resolve the dispute.

AVZ's shares were suspended by DRC in May 2022, and then delisted from the stock exchange two years later, due to a dispute. DRC said that it did not interact with AVZ at all during the suspension, and therefore the suspension is now void.

The company announced that the ICSID proceedings will resume.

KoBold Metals didn't immediately respond to our request for comment. (Reporting and editing by Sherry Phillips and Alan Barona in Bengaluru, and John Biju in Bengaluru)

(source: Reuters)