Marine Harvest Chile files civil lawsuit against former manager
The lawyer of Marine Harvest Chile, José Miguel Gana, commented that these legal actions have been filed “to prove that several breaches to the Corporations Law were carried out by the former general manager and in order to show the obligation of the other participants to indemnify for damages and return the patrimonial benefits obtained from such actions,” he said. These legal actions are part of the judicial process that started with the preliminary precautionary measure ordered by the 14th Civil Court in Santiago, the financial journal Diario Financiero reports.
As stated in the brief, “the defendant, using information obtained because of his position, devised a business and persistently insisted in its implementation with the apparent intention of pursuing the interests of Marine Harvest and Salmones Tecmar, when his true motivation was personal gain and to take advantage, for his own benefit and that of the people he invited to participate in this business, of a commercial opportunity that resulted from the sanitary crisis produced by the ISA virus.”
Therefore, they will ask Mr Jiménez and the partners of Salmones Sur Austral to return Marine Harvest the money obtained after the signature of the contracts, in addition to compensation for the damage caused and the payment of the trial costs. “We want the people who are responsible to respond with their own patrimony”, the lawyer explained.
According to Marine Harvest Chile, by doing what he did, Jiménez seriously breached essential obligations established by the Corporations Law which should be followed by general managers in every company. Gana expressed that “these regulations are related with the respect for fiduciary duties as well as with the loyalty they must show in such a position, in addition to the principle of good faith. This duty of loyalty is the counterpart to the trust given to him by the shareholders and the Board of Marine Harvest, obligation which prevented him from benefiting from his employers”.
Among the infringements that the company attributes to Jiménez, he had the obligation to inform the Board about any contract or situation in which he (as a manager or director) could be involved directly or representing another person, and which should have been known and approved previously by the Board, establishing as a requirement that such business had to comply with equity conditions similar to those of the market. Likewise, it is prohibited to the general manager to use company assets for his own benefit.
Background In the middle of 2009, Marine Harvest Chile signed a contract with Salmones Sur Austral, by means of which Marine Harvest Chile “would provide 1.6 million smolts to be grown by Salmones Sur Austral using the productive assets and necessary know-how of Marine Harvest Chile in order to do so, in exchange of receiving an eventual payment, both for the fish as well as for the use of the assets, only in the case that the process of fish growth was satisfactory”, it is explained in the claim.
On the other hand, the investors would have to finance all the costs and expenses associated in exchange of earning the profit, after having paid Marine Harvest the above mentioned eventual payment.
