Court awards South African firm $10m over ‘Ebola dispute’

A South African drilling contractor was awarded US$10 million (Dh36.72m) by a Dubai court after judges accepted the company’s argument that it was unjustly ordered off a mining site in Guinea and its equipment left to corrode.

The company filed a case against the Dubai-based mine operator at the Dubai Civil Court after a longstanding row.

The court heard the company was told it must leave the site in Guinea in 2012 because of a suspected outbreak of Ebola, but this was two years before the actual epidemic.

The judges accepted that the company, based in Secunda in north-east South Africa, suffered significant losses when it was forced to leave the site.

The court was told the Dubaibased mine operator won mining rights in 2010 for diamond, gold and precious stone sites in Guinea. It signed an exploration

Contractor was told to leave mining site in Guinea because of a suspected outbreak

drilling contract with the South African company in November 2011.

“My client paid $400,000 to move four pieces of drilling equipment to the location, then moved its staff, including supervisors and maintenance technicians and started mining work,” said legal consultant Hassan Elhais, whose firm represented the South African company. He told the court that his client worked for about three months from March 2012. The Dubai operator ordered them to stop work in July 2012, blaming it on the Ebola virus and political unrest in the country.

A request from the company for the machinery to be lifted from the site was rejected by the Dubai firm, Mr Elhais said.

The court ruled that the Dubai operator was responsible for causing the claimant to lose millions of dollars and ordered it to pay $10.1m in compensation.

In its defence, the Dubai company told the court that it had informed the drilling company, in writing, of a decision to terminate excavations and said that no promises had been made that work would resume.

The court said it had not seen evidence such an email was sent. The firm immediately appealed against the verdict.