"The company is studying every available option that will enable it to get its money back, even including the sale of assets and appeals to international courts of arbitration," a spokesman for Newmont said. "Uzbek courts ruled in June 2006 that the joint venture owed the Uzbek state $48 million by way of unpaid taxes. The joint venture challenged the verdicts. The government of Uzbekistan initiated a series of actions that compromise the acting accords and activities of the joint venture."

The matter concerns the decision of the Navoi Regional Court that sided up with tax structures demanding taxes from the Uzbek-American joint venture for 2002-2004. The joint venture cannot even control its bank accounts now. It is only permitted to withdraw money from them to pay taxes and salaries to employees.

Along with everything else, the authorities revoked certain tax privileges Zeravshan-Newmont had enjoyed.

Newmont, State Committee for Geology and Mineral Resources, and the Navoi Mining and Smelting established Zeravshan-Newmont in 1992 to develop the Muruntau open-pit which is believed to contain 220 million tons of ore. Average gold content is 1.4 grams per ton of ore.

The joint venture operated under the government resolution "On effective functioning of the Uzbek-American Zeravshan-Newmont and government guarantees to it" until recently.

Newmont reported the sales of gold by the joint venture 8% down in the second quarter of 2006 against the sales in the similar period of 2005. The drop in sales was attributed to the decline of gold content in the ore.

The joint venture brought production down by 36% (to 7.7 tons of gold) in 2005.

Experts were heard as assuming that the joint venture would deplete its source of raw materials by 2010-2012.

A source in the CIS market of precious metals told INTERFAX in April that Interros might buy Newmont out of the joint venture. According to the source, Interros is really interested in the uranium and gold produced by the Navoi Mining and Smelting. (This latter is one of the largest producers of precious metals in Central Asia, and the only outfit that enriches and exports uranium in Uzbekistan.)

Newmont is the second largest producer of gold in the world. According to Newmont, its share in the Uzbek-American joint venture amounted to nearly $94 million on June 30, 2006.