Ecuador has to pay 75 million U.S. dollars to U.S. oil company Occidental (Oxy) as it lost a tax dispute before an arbitral court in England, Ecuador's attorney general Xavier Garaicoa said on Friday.
Garaicoa acknowledged on Friday that Ecuador had lost its dispute over value added tax refund with Oxy and was analyzing how to make the compensation payment.
England's Trade Affairs Court on July 4 rejected Ecuador's request to annul an arbitral court verdict ordering the compensation payment to Oxy since it excluded this company from a tax refund process.
The Ecuadorian government has said it will appeal against the British court's resolution, but Garaicoa acknowledged the measure is only aimed at delaying the payment and payment options are being considered.
"No, that is resolved," Garaicoa said when asked by reporters if the appeal sought to revert the 75-million-dollar payment that has been deliberated in courts since 2004.
"As a lawyer I have to continue the fight until they tell me to stop. I have to help delay the payment as long as possible," Garaicoa said.
The tax system that triggered the dispute allows exporting companies since 1999 to recover the value added tax paid for asset purchases.
Ecuador, the fifth largest fossil fuel producer in South America with a 530,000-barrel daily production, has refused to include foreign oil companies in the tax refund system, claiming they extract oil and do not produce assets, a necessary condition for receiving a tax refund.
Oxy may have to demand international measures to force the payment as Ecuadorian laws do not prescribe an obligatory compliance with the arbitral court's verdict.
Source: Xinhua
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