Silver Elephant Mining (TSX: ELEF) has taken its long running feud with Andean Precious Metals (TSX: APM) to court, filing a Notice of Civil Claim in the Supreme Court of British Columbia that accuses Andean of muscling it out of a major Bolivian silver project.
The claim, brought by Silver Elephant alongside subsidiaries Apogee Minerals Bolivia and ASC Bolivia, names Andean and three of its executives in the suit. Executives included include vice president of legal and administration Federico Gil, chief financial officer Juan Carlos Sandoval, and Humberto Rada, who heads Andean’s Bolivian subsidiary Empresa Minera Manquiri.
At the centre of the dispute is the Pulacayo-Paca project, a silver, lead and zinc deposit covered by a mining production contract that Apogee signed in 2019 with COMIBOL, Bolivia’s state mining company. That contract granted 15 years of mining rights, with an option to extend for another 15.
Silver Elephant alleges the defendants knew about the contract and induced COMIBOL to tear it up for their own commercial gain. COMIBOL terminated the agreement on December 16, 2024, which Silver Elephant says was done without proper basis.
WATCH: Silver Elephant Vs Andean Precious Metals: A Bolivian Mining Drama
The timing is the crux of the complaint. Silver Elephant says that once it was displaced, Andean signed an exclusive deal with COMIBOL in February 2025 to extract and sell oxide material from the same concessions, followed by a longer term agreement in June 2025 for up to seven million tonnes over a decade.
Since then, according to the claim, Andean has pulled roughly 250,000 tonnes of oxide material out of the ground, worth an estimated US$100 million, a figure Silver Elephant argues is only a fraction of what the deposit holds. The indicated resource has been pegged at 106.7 million ounces of silver, plus more than a billion pounds zinc and nearly 700 million pounds of lead.
Silver Elephant is seeking general, special and punitive damages, along with interest and costs. It hasn’t put a number on the total, but says the value of the lost contract could run to several times the US$100 million Andean has already extracted.
Andean wasted little time pushing back, issuing a statement earlier today in which the company called the allegations spurious and without merit, and flatly denied interfering with any of Silver Elephant’s contracts or business relationships. It said it intends to fight the claim and expects it to be dismissed, but declined further comment while the matter is before the courts.
The lawsuit follows a January arbitration ruling that went Silver Elephant’s way, ordering Andean to pay about US$1 million owed under a separate services agreement and dismissing its counterclaims. Silver Elephant says it also plans to pursue steps in Bolivia to get the production contract reinstated.
Silver Elephant last traded at $0.135 on the TSX.
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