Argentinian Origin Activist Warned that the Taboga Company Will Dry Up Wetlands to Produce Ethanol

A serious denunciation was made by the Argentinian origin activist Gadi Amit, who has been living in Costa Rica for decades, in relation to the sale of ethanol by the Taboga company to the Costa Rican Petroleum Refinery (Recope), a management that if implemented would mean Costa Ricans have to pay the exorbitant sum of US$ 425,000,000 to the IDB, destroying in the process the production of ethanol Lomas de Barbudal Biological Reserve, because the amount of water needed to achieve it has to come from somewhere .

This new complaint is in addition to the several that already has against the former president of Costa Rica and now infamous Nobel Peace Prize 1987, Dr. Oscar Arias Sánchez, who in addition to the scandals for sexual abuse reported in his against, his name is now ventilated with the millionaire shenanigans that are handled in one of the companies where his tentacles are stuck.

This was reported from Guanacaste, Costa Rica, the president of the Confraternidad Guanacaste group, Gadi Amit, “this is intolerable, very worrying, they want to sign a contract with Recope and Taboga, to put alcohol on gasoline in Costa Rica, but to produce the cane from which the alcohol comes out, they use all the water from Guanacaste, and to have more water they make a reservoir project that will be paid with public funds, but the water will be used for irrigation. In this sense, they approved a US$ 425 million loan from the IDB. This is crazy, just so that the sugar mills earn more money. Here, the profits go directly to the associates of Taboga is neither for the country nor for the common citizen. Taboga, like so many more, is a national company that does not pay taxes insured not to have profits, do you want to see us face?”, Said Amit.

A public mockery

As it is of public knowledge and mentioned by Amit, the Taboga Sugar Mill is the birthplace of the wealth and power of Oscar Arias Sánchez, 2-time president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner. For in the list of large companies that delivered at the end of 2018 the Ministry of Finance, Taboga declared zero profits or losses for 3 years, thus freeing itself from paying taxes to the Ministry of Finance, here it is what they (Taboga) put in their page:

“Ingenio Taboga is an agroindustrial company traditionally dedicated to the sowing of sugarcane, production of sugar, alcohol and electricity. In 2014, he also ventured into rice cultivation, and in 2015 he produced protein for animal feed based on dry yeast with the name Protab. We are one of the largest producers of sugar in Costa Rica. We have a milling capacity of 7,000 tons of cane per day and approximately 1,800,000 packages of sugar are produced between white sugar, special white, demerara, zukra, and raw sugar.

 Ingenio Taboga obtained HACCP certification in the 2005-2006 harvest and FSSC-22000 in the 2015-2016 harvest. These certifications represent a robust safety system for the process plant. Our distillery produces approximately 200,000 liters of alcohol per day. We have the capacity to produce both anhydrous alcohol and REN potable alcohol. We have produced 24.3 million liters of alcohol in one harvest. During the last years, we obtained the ISCC (International Sustainability & Carbon Certification) certification and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) certification, which enable us to sell certified ethanol internationally.

Since our inception in 1958, we have produced electricity for the operation of the plant itself, but since 2002, thanks to better energy balances and investments in the implementation of new technologies, we produce electricity for sale to the Costa Rican Electricity Institute. In the 2013-2014 harvest, a total of 43,600 megawatts of environmentally friendly electricity was produced. Ingenio Taboga is a company with a high level of productivity and efficiency in the agricultural and industrial field of sugarcane, which seeks to satisfy the needs of customers, the integral quality of life of the worker and the protection of the environment “, indicates the web.

They dry up Guanacaste

Before all this, Gadi Amit attacked frontally assuring that “now they are trying to embark the country in the use of ethanol mixed with fuel for vehicles, for that, they need to expand their production, and to do so they need more water for irrigation, in the Guanacaste area, very dry. Ingenio Taboga consumes about 7,000 liters of water per second (l/s) today. More than the whole province, which only reaches about 4,000 l/s. In their madness to achieve more water resources for irrigation, they managed to approve in the Legislative Assembly -where the Party of Arias, National Liberation has the largest bench- a Law to destroy by flood a part of Lomas de Barbudal, protected area and declared site Ramsar”, continues the president of Confraternidad Guanacaste to our Agency.

The curious thing, not to say that suspicious, is that this is happening and will become even more complicated before 2022, in a Costa Rica that prides itself on being protective of the environment, some businesses define politics and economics. On the one hand, Taboga Ingenio boasts of producing millions of tons in sugar products, but they declare the Hacienda almost bankrupt. “The business is not good for the country. It will bring problems to the users because the engines are not manufactured for that. But it can fill the pockets of Arias and his cronies, Oscar Arias is not at his best. Attorney General Emilia Navas accuses him of violating the laws by signing a Decree declaring the business of open-pit gold mining a National Interest.

In addition, he is accused by several women of sexual abuse. There are already several criminal cases on this issue”, says the international activist.