Buying the Azmar lie

There have been a couple “letters to the editor” recently that show a lack of understanding of the basic problems with Azmar’s request for a permit to strip-mine Pagan. There is the assumption that Azmar is a serious concern, well-funded and managed, and that granting their permit request will lead to significant and quick money. To anyone who believes this fairy tale, please take the time to read and understand what is known about Azmar and its founder, Ken Moore. A lot of people have worked hard to bring the mining issue out into full public view so that you can have access to real information—not just the hype provided by individuals who are on the Azmar payroll. We know, for instance, that:

— Azmar has no serious money of its own

— Azmar has no mining experience

— Azmar has no mining operation plan

— Azmar has no environmental protection plan

That, right there, is enough for MPLA to turn down Azmar’s permit request. But there’s much, much more:

— Azmar’s Projected Operating Statement conflicts with their numerous and misleading public statements. High-paying jobs for CNMI citizens? The only really high-paying jobs go to Ken Moore and another non-local company officer who share $600,000 per year in guaranteed salary. Of five other high-paying jobs, including a single Engineering Manager, a Security Manager and three “Support Personnel” jobs, four can be expected to go to Azmar’s existing team. What’s left is barely enough to pay about 12 equipment operators less than $30,000 per year, and 12 temporary construction workers less than $23,000 per year. Not to mention the fact that at the end of the three-year projection, Ken Moore, Azmar’s only stockholder, gets $40.5 million while MPLA gets $18.7 million. Project the following year’s profits and the split is $47.2 million Moore, 9.7 million MPLA. That’s for a single year.

— Azmar told potential buyers they had a permit when they did not. This is why their buyer, Consolidated American Energy Resources Inc. (CAER) quit dealing with them and approached MPLA directly. Azmar also told MPLA they had 41 million dollars committed to the project when they didn’t. They simply misrepresented an unverified 41 million dollars for the Azmar Foundation’s W.W.II museum—saying it was available for Azmar International. They told the Governor and MPLA that they would be fully operational in 60 days when it was clearly impossible due to the number of permits and clearances from CRM, DEQ, HPO, EPA, etc., that would take months to obtain and would require studies of Azmar’s Operation Plan—a plan that never existed.

— Azmar claimed there are 200 million tons of high-quality pozzolan on Pagan. Yet, to them, that’s just hearsay. They never sent any technical people to Pagan, never collected field samples, and Azmar founder Ken Moore has never even been there. All of the technical details on Azmar’s website were lifted word-for-word from another company’s website. Azmar did submit samples—that someone else collected—to Construction Technology Laboratories in Skokie, Illinois. And they were bold enough to publish the results of those tests in their marketing materials—despite the fact that they never paid for those lab tests.

— Azmar doesn’t pay its bills. The Skokie, Illinois, lab, Construction Technology Laboratories, has been trying unsuccessfully for many months to get Ken Moore to pay for the lab work. Incredibly, the bill Ken Moore won’t pay is for only $1,000.

— MPLA has repeatedly asked for proof of financial backing from Ken Moore which he has not provided—for MONTHS. They also asked him to put $5 million in a CNMI bank as a security deposit and he hasn’t done that either.

— Azmar makes no plans for protecting the environment. Missing from their operating statement is any funding for environmental damage mitigation—no funds for reforestation, no environmental studies, no marine biologists, no agriculturalists, no one to monitor anything. Clearly the environment is not a priority.

— Azmar risks no money for the development of infrastructure for local Pagan residents. Any such funds would come from revenues generated by the sale of pozzolan. In other words, they could go in there, cut the place up, pollute the surrounding waters, ruin the beach, fail and walk away leaving a devastated island and a big mess for us to clean up.

— Azmar’s “security plan” for Pagan includes 12 security personnel armed with M16 machine guns. Is this to protect Azmar from the families of Pagan?

— The Azmar “deal” is extremely one-sided in favor of Azmar. The Azmar/MPLA calculator at http://www.chamorro.com/community/pagan/calculator.html demonstrates clearly that the deal is ludicrous at any reasonable cost of production and pozzolan sale price.

— Azmar’s amateurish website is heavy on promises but completely lacking in detail. Nothing about their “generous plans” for the local community is solid and verifiable. Just pie-in-the-sky promises backed by nothing.

You’ll find all the details online at http://www.chamorro.com/pagan. News articles, documents, emails, permit requests, lab results, marketing materials—it’s all there, compliments of the many people who have gathered them and forwarded them for publication on the PaganWatch web site—published so that you can read and verify these findings for yourselves.

Thank goodness that the MPLA has the good sense not to squander the potential of Pagan on Azmar. Let’s hope they can continue to resist the intense pressure being put on them by certain politicians who don’t seem to understand that “just any” investor is not good enough. We need a real investor who can deliver. We need one that brings an offer that benefits the people of the Marianas and not just themselves.

Peter J. Pangelinan Perez
PaganWatch
Gualo Rai, Saipan, and San Francisco, California