6/11/2023 0 Comments Battery guardian apkA study carried out for the GBA by McKinsey, a consultancy, suggested that demand for batteries will grow by as much as 30% a year up to 2030. In the meantime, the mining industry is looking forward to a boom in demand for lithium, cobalt, manganese and nickel, four of the vital ingredients in a car battery. However, campaigners argue that there will always be questions over whether industry-controlled schemes can ever be relied on for transparency. “No, it is transparent, publicly available information, and that’s very powerful.” “It’s not something that is hidden in an industry body that is trying to make something a secret,” Sobotka said at the Davos event. Sobotka has tried to pre-empt some of the criticisms of the battery passport, which is being built using blockchain technology that would make it very hard to alter data. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. The GBA said it was a completely independent initiative, and it is neutral with regards to providers of battery passport solutions. Two of three pilot battery passports the GBA revealed at the Davos event cited ReSource, alongside two other supply chain audit companies. Gillian Davidson, an ERG executive, serves as chair of the GBA’s board. In 2016 Sobotka was one of the founder members of the Global Battery Alliance, a group of companies and non-governmental organisations that discusses standards for the fast-growing industry. Sobotka was brought in by the owners to make a fresh start, according to campaigners and analysts. Sobotka told the Davos audience that the increased demand for batteries was “one of the most staggering growth stories in the history of mankind”. It and the rest of the mining sector are racing for the lead in digging out the minerals required for batteries. No charges have been brought in the SFO investigation and ENRC has strongly denied the allegations of fraud.ĮRG employs 100,000 people, including in the world’s biggest cobalt mine, Metalkol, in Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ENRC said its legal action against the SFO and its former lawyers was found to have merit by London’s high court. The company delisted from the London Stock Exchange in November 2013, after a torrid time as one of the most scandal-hit members in the history of the FTSE 100 index.ĮRG was incorporated in Luxembourg in 2013 as the new parent company of ENRC, which has mounted 18 legal actions in the US and UK against journalists, investigators, contractors, lawyers and even the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) since the UK law enforcement agency began an investigation into the fraud allegations in 2013, according to Rights and Accountability in Development, a human rights charity. It was ENRC’s “misfortune that the very person tasked with conducting the internal investigation betrayed his client, leaked to the press, and was encouraged by SFO officers to breach his duties to his client”. Via its current lawyers, ENRC said the allegations in the letter were that it was a victim of fraud, rather than the perpetrator. The judgment said that ENRC had brought in lawyers to investigate “some of its operations in Kazakhstan and then also the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular, where it was thought that they may have been tainted by bribery, corruption, and fraud”. Details from the letter were leaked to the Times by ENRC’s own former lawyer the judgment said. In late 2010 the company received an anonymous whistleblower letter “which made serious allegations about ENRC’s operations in Kazakhstan”, according to a judgment from London’s high court last year. Yet during the next six years it faced a slew of controversies. By 2006, ENRC had annual revenues of more than $3bn and accounted for 4% of Kazakhstan’s GDP, according to legal documents.ĮNRC announced its entrance into the international business elite in 2007, when it listed its shares on the London Stock Exchange. Through ENRC, the oligarchs built up a huge empire mining metals centred on their operations in Kazakhstan. The oligarchs also control the majority of ERG (although Ibragimov died in 2021 and was replaced by his son Shukhrat). ENRC was founded in 1994 during post-Soviet privatisations by three oligarchs – Kyrgyz-born Alexander Machkevitch, Uzbekistan-born Patokh Chodiev and Kazakh-born Alijan Ibragimov.
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