sasa, i've figured it out...LC is cursed...thats all there is to it...took this from an old article titled the curse of LC but personally i think the curse may go back to the conquistadors/aztecs...who knows? but maybe somebody should go sprinkle an offering of gold on mr/mrs lemons grave......

The Curse of Las Cristinas or 25 years bitter legal wrangling, corruption, and treachery.

Both the real and the fictional “El Dorado” is a colorful backdrop to tales of thousands of gold hunter explorers searching for lost, then found and later lost again fortunes. Such is the story of Las Cristinas. The untapped mine’s wealth was parceled off as mining concessions in 1963 and the concession titles for Cristinas 4, 5, 6 and 7 were issued in 1964 for a 25-year period to Ms. Dot Culver-Lemon. Her husband along Jimmy Angel apparently discovered of the world’s highest waterfall, Angel Falls, about 80 miles west of El Dorado in an area not far from Cristinas site.

Ms. Culver-Lemon, a resident of the United States who spoke no Spanish, was quick to get help and advice on what to do with the property and entered into a series of contracts and lease agreements promising great riches to her through the exploitation of the mining concessions. She surrounded herself by unscrupulous profiteers made up of local experts and lawyers; a dependency that would deprive her of any meaningful income from the concessions and would eventually cost her mining title itself. A synopsis unladed with legal terminology goes like this:

The first lawsuit filed in the Las Cristinas ownership saga was in 1982, when Mrs. Lemon sues a business partner over an alleged breach of contract. In 1984 The case goes to a regional state. Then another suit follows. Her lawyer at the time sues her for unpaid legal fees incurred during the case.

As Mrs. Lemon was unable to pay those fees, her attorney files a claim in the same court for the unpaid fees and effectively became her creditor. Subsequently Mrs. Lemon finds a new lawyer to help her fight gain definitive ownership to her portion of the Las Cristinas concessions. Her first lawyer to whom she owes 259,000 Bolivar and who filed the first lawsuit on her behalf, lends the same amount owned to him by Mrs. Lemon to a local miner by the name of Ramon Torres. Why? It remains unclear. Then in an unexpected twist, Mrs. Lemon’s second lawyer apparently acting with her full consent sells- transfers his widowed client’s concessions to the miner Ramon Torres. Both lawyers did not act in their client’s best interest. In another transaction Torres then relinquishes without notifying any state mining officials over his mining titles to the company Inversora MAEL C.A. In 1985, a battle weary Mr. Lemon, reattempted to regain her ownership rights to the mine. However, a year the potentially wealthy widow died without any inheritors. Her passing set of a decade long saga of incredibly complex mind boggling in their complexity machinations and legal actions designed to gain control of the Las Cristinas*. In 1989 25 years later after the original title granted to Mrs. Lemon ran out MAEL, the last legal title holder to the mine lost all rights to its claims of the Las Cristinas.

What ensued was a bewildering succession of suits and counter suits and lengthy legal battles. But like spirit of Dot Culver Lemon hovered over the mine seeking redemption for the original swindle which cheated the American widow, casting a curse on any mining company which tried to gain access to it riches in the future. Each new investor whether an individual or foreign company had to content with the fall out from previous endless legal rounds of wrangling. All this led to La Cristinas unexploited gold mine becoming a murky bog filled with unresolved lawsuits, questionable ownership claims over the mine and dirty deals.

Then as if to save the day major Placer Dome appears on the scene after a decade of legal limbo which effectively paralyzed any development of the according to an industry Canada, in 1996 The Canadian company along with subsidiary Placer Dome de Venezuela and the Venezuelan government at the time entered into their first “joint venture” with the state owned mining administrative entity CVG. The result of this unlikely union was MINCA which was co owned with 70% stake in the mine controlled by Placer Dome and the Venezuelan government held 30%. The mine with its heavy historical baggage of legal imbroglios and unresolved conflict dating back to Dot Culver -Lemon chapter of this saga did not deter KRY Prwdient Marc Oppenhiemer. The “venture capitalist enters into the fray and launched a law suit against the owners of MINCA, challenging ownership. This latest legal action against the mine’s owners at the time lead once more a halt in operations at the mine in early 1998. Later after a court ruling dismissed the Oppenhemier legal actions and ruled in favor of MINCA. However, this was a hollow victory; low gold prices made the mine an unprofitable investment and once again operation was suspended and time and money were lost as a result. And like a festering open wound the mine was plagued with problems ; a lack of proper financing to develop the mining site, and as time passed frictions emerged the two partners in run gold venture Placer Dome - CVG -the Bolivarian republic and hobbled the MINCA administration of the mine.