The TPP: A Corporate Bill of Rights

[monicaangela]

13. How about a case study...

This Is What Happened In El Salvador

As the Latin Times’ Susmita Baral explained last September:

"[Oceana Gold subsidiary] Oceana Gold subsidary Pacific Rim filed a complaint against El Salvador in 2009. In 2012, the ICSID ruled that the case could proceed under El Salvador’s foreign investment laws—laws which have since been amended to prevent international companies from bypassing Salvadoran courts.

“Officials said that Oceana Gold’s subsidiary, Pacific Rim] failed to meet three key legal requirements for a mining permit: It failed to get government approval for its Environmental Impact Study (EIS); It did not submit a required feasibility study; and it was not even close to meeting the requirement that it held titles to (or permission to mine in) all the land for which it requested a concession.

“[OceanaGold]Oceana Gold lobbied for a new mining law that it wrote and that would eliminate regulatory requirements it couldn’t meet. Having failed to push the law through, OceanaGold bypassed El Salvador’s democratically-elected government and initiated international arbitration to pressure El Salvador to pay for lost exploration costs and future profits.” Its exactly this kind of dispute that caused concerns for liberal lawmaker Elizabeth Warren because it weakened national sovereignty.

That doesn't sound like Sanders and Warren not telling the truth to me. It sounds more like a corporate takeover, using arbitration to bypass elected governments.

http://www.latintimes.com/el-salvadorian-activists-protest-tpp-lawsuit-how-pacific-rim-arbitration-case-preview-303775