Multinational Sues Nicaraguan Environmentalists

Weekly News Update on the Americas, #450, 13 September 1998

On Aug. 15 the PRADA, S.A. lumber company filed a suit against the Humboldt Center, a Nicaraguan environmental organization, for damaging insults to a Nicaraguan company. Earlier in the summer the Humboldt Center had charged that PRADA was a Nicaraguan front company for Sol del Caribe, S.A. (SOLCARSA), a subsidiary of the Korean firm Kumkyung Co. Ltd [see Update #400]. The Supreme Court of Justice closed SOLCARSA in February for illegal plywood operations and for cutting down forests in indigenous communities in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN). SOLCARSA's owners then created the new, supposedly Nicaraguan PRADA, according to the Humboldt Center, which asked the authorities to close PRADA as well.

The government failed to respond to the center's request. Meanwhile, the company filed its suit, which the center says is the first suit ever in Nicaragua by a transnational against an activist group. The environmentalists appealed the suit, but the judge rejected the appeal. In addition, the Humboldt Center says it has been slandered by PRADA in paid newspaper ads and that "colleagues of our organization" have suffered "persecution." The center is asking for letters of support to be sent by email to <humboldt@ibw.com.ni#62; or faxes to +505-249-2903, or +505-260- 0136.