The below is a suggested format of the letter to GCM’s Directors and the CEO. To personalise and to flood the GCM’s directors, CEO and communication and media inboxes, please Feel Free to edit, amend and rephrase the letter.  Thanks.

 

20 March 2020, London.

Gary Norman Lye

Alternate Director and CEO

&

Datuk Michael Tang

Executive Chairman

GCM Resources plc.

Piccadilly Circus, London, UK.

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7290 1630

Email: info@gcmplc.com

GCM: HANDS OFF PHULBARI

Dear Mr Gary Norman Lye and Datuk Michael Tang,

I write as your company are selling shares in the London Stock Exchange on Phulbari coal mine’s name, for 14 years without permit to operate in Phulbari in Bangladesh.

The Global Coal Management (GCM) Resources plan to build a massive open cast coal mine by displacing upto 220, 000 people and polluting 14, 600 hectares of fertile land (1 hectare is equal to 2.471 acres or 10,000 square metres) from Bangladesh’s only flood protected area.  For the people in the region, this project would mean losing their livelihood and identities because the mining would disperse the communities. It would also impact upto 50,000 indigenous people from the area and the world’s largest mangrove forests, the Sundarbans.

GCM Resources, then ‘Asia Energy’, was listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange in 2004, following the granting of a two-year permit (license) from the Bangladesh Energy Department’s Bureau of Mineral Resource Development on 27 January 2004 for exploration and surveying of a 572 millions tons open cast coal mine at Phulbari in Dinajpur, Northwest Bangladesh. A Scheme of Development was submitted to the Government of Bangladesh in 2005 but has never received approval. The original permit has expired on 27 January 2006 and has not been renewed, yet the company has continued to sell shares and raise capital in London share market, based on claims that a contract will be forthcoming. GCM Resources has no other assets or projects in its portfolio.

Phulbari communities maintain that GCM is responsible for the murder of three young boys and 200 injured in a 2006 demonstration in Phulbari, where 80,000 people marched against the company. They also say that you, Gary Lye as the CEO of the company, have filed false legal cases against community leaders, including the Mayor of Dinajpur, in Dinajpur judge court claiming 1 Billion Bangladeshi Taka from the community, because you were stopped from returning to Phulbari after the shooting and for damage to GCM’s fraudulent business intentions.  In December 2019 the communities in Phulbari have handed a memo to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, (who is also Bangladesh’s Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources) via the UNO, asking her to take legal action against your company, immediately.

Bangladesh government “is proceeding to take legal action against” your company. The Deputy State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, Nasrul Hamid, made this statement to the daily Prothom Alo newspaper on 23 August 2019.

In this context,  I would like to ask you to take your hands off Phulbari, withdraw all false cases against the community leaders in Phulbari and Dinajpur, compensate the victims in Phulbari shooting 2006, and stop selling shares in Phulbari coal project’s name, and stop signing Memorandum of Understanding with external corporations without permit, immediately.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Your Name

Cc.

1. Keith Fulton

Finance Director

GCM Resources plc.

Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7290 1630

Email: info@gcmplc.com

2. Strand Hanson Limited,  Media and Communications agents for GCM

Stuart Faulkner: StuartFaulkner@strandhanson.co.uk

Rory Murphy: RoryMurphy@strandhanson.co.uk

James Dance: JamesDance@strandhanson.co.uk