Ex-security chief for subsidiary of Hudbay Minerals pleads guilty to killing, paralyzing Indigenous Guatemalans

By Max Binks-Collier, The Star

January 7, 2021

On Wednesday, the former head of security for a subsidiary of the Toronto-based mining company Hudbay Minerals officially pled guilty in a Guatemalan court to killing a local Indigenous community leader and paralyzing another Indigenous man.

This could have important ramifications for two lawsuits against Hudbay underway in Ontario that centre on the Sept. 27, 2009, killing and maiming of the Indigenous men.

Mynor Padilla, the former security chief of CGN, a Guatemalan nickel-mining company that was owned by Hudbay between 2008 and 2011, pled guilty to the crimes on Dec. 17, 2020, as part of an agreement struck between Padilla and his victims, among them Angelica Choc, the widow of slain community leader Adolfo Ich, and German Chub, who was paralyzed.

On Wednesday, the court accepted and ratified the guilty pleas.

The court’s decision could be game-changing for two lawsuits that Choc and Chub launched against Hudbay in Ontario in 2010. They allege that Hudbay was negligent in how it managed the private security of its subsidiary, CGN, which has a compound located near several Indigenous communities in rural Guatemala.

In documents filed in court, Padilla is alleged to have shot Ich in the head at close range after Ich was dragged through the fence of CGN’s compound by security guards and had his arm nearly severed by a machete blow.

Padilla is also alleged to have shot Chub at close range, paralyzing him from the mid-chest down and permanently collapsing his left lung, as Chub watched a community soccer game near CGN. Neither man posed a threat to CGN security.

The court’s decision is significant because one of Hudbay’s main legal defences is that Padilla did not shoot either man. In fact, Hudbay has stated in court that Choc and Chub have “concocted” stories falsely accusing Padilla of the violence he has now pled guilty to having committed.Wednesday’s ruling “pulls the rug out from under Hudbay’s key defence,” said Cory Wanless, one of the lawyers representing Choc and Chub in their lawsuits against Hudbay.

“Mr. Padilla’s criminal proceedings are coming to a conclusion based on a plea agreement, which accounts for many different factors,” Hudbay said in an email. “We will review the court’s written decision once it is released. Any agreements made in the Guatemalan court do not affect our view of the facts or Hudbay’s liability in relation to civil matters currently before the Ontario court.”

CGN did not respond to requests for comment. Padilla could not be reached for comment.

The guilty pleas do not automatically invalidate Hudbay’s argument that Padilla did not kill Ich and paralyze Chub, but Ontario courts will consider them “highly relevant and highly persuasive” pieces of evidence that “will become a key part” of the lawsuits if they go to trial, said Murray Klippenstein, another lawyer for Choc and Chub.

Hudbay will now have to rely heavily on the other pillar of its legal defence, which is that it was not negligent in its management of CGN’s private security, Klippenstein and Wanless said. The two lawyers will argue against that defence by drawing on hundreds of the more than 20,000 internal corporate documents disclosed by Hudbay through the discovery process. The documents paint “a very detailed picture of the facts surrounding” the shootings of Ich and Chub, Klippenstein said.

“Based on what we know, it is going to be very difficult for Hudbay to argue that they don’t bear responsibility for what happened at their mine,” Wanless said. “The higher-ups at Hudbay were well aware of what happened on the ground in Guatemala.”

Padilla was sentenced by the Guatemalan court to a total of two years and eight months for his crimes against Ich and Chub. The court has commuted his sentence to fines that are to be paid to the court. Padilla also previously paid Chub and Choc in out-of-court settlements. On Wednesday, the court also accepted his guilty pleas for assaulting two other Indigenous villagers on the same day. The terms of his sentence were agreed upon by Padilla and his victims before the court accepted them.

Padilla previously spent about 4.5 years in prison awaiting an earlier trial for these crimes that ended in an acquittal, but that acquittal was overturned on appeal amidst allegations of corruption against the judge who presided over it.

Reactions to the plea deal were mixed. Klippenstein and Wanless considered it to be a relatively positive outcome in light of the dysfunctionality of Guatemala’s justice system and the impunity rampant within the country. But Ramon Cadena, a Guatemalan human rights lawyer and regional director for the International Commission of Jurists, said that the sentence was just a slap on the wrist. “It is a reflection of the impunity in Guatemala,” he said.

“It’s not very fair, but for me, however, it is a big achievement,” said Angelica Choc.

She choked up. “It hurts me too much … remembering my husband.” But now, with the guilty plea coming more than a decade after her husband’s death, “I feel very at peace.”