What I can do here is. Okay, Viktor, if you want to unmute yourself.
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There you go.
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[Non-English content] Erik, some short legal status.
Okay. I hope you don't mind I do this in English as I have normally done. When we began to plan for this particular shareholder information meeting, it was before the news from the Cassation. The focus was to be on the general assembly, the votes, the equity issue, et cetera. Obviously last Friday we received some good news that we had the judgment in our favor from the Court of Cassation. We thought it would be appropriate to speak a bit about this and the other related legal processes. What we do not have just yet is a full understanding of the timelines for the future processes. It's a bit too soon since the judgment for us to fully grasp exactly how long the next parts are going to take.
Regardless, let's go through really quickly the two arbitration matters that are going on in June, both of which have ended the active part at this point. Let's start here with the first arbitration. Friday, we received this judgment from the court. The date on the document is actually a week earlier, but it appears not to have been entered until Friday. We got the news on Friday last week, and we went and checked, and there it was. It was a very short decision, only about 12 pages long. In short, the court found as follows. EAM filed four grounds of appeal. Those were coming from our problems with, let's call them summarized problems from the previous rulings. Just by way of recap, in 2019, we concluded the first arbitration.
The first arbitration found that the purchase agreement for the power plants was indeed breached. The representations and warranties were not honored correctly. Obviously, we did not get what we paid for. However, our request to exceed the 10% liability cap was not granted. This was primarily due to the fact that the first arbitration had issued an order by which any of the statements made or documents signed by or actions taken by those people indicted in the criminal proceedings, any of those elements from those individuals were not to be included in this arbitration. We thought that was really incorrect, and obviously that limited our ability to argue on our behalf, because a great portion of our case in this matter was related to what the prosecutor had found in relation to the crimes. Now we know last year, those crimes were finally finished in the criminal process.
The convictions against the state of Italy and the liability for them were upheld. That case is now done. How does that relate to this one here? Well, we appealed to the Appeal Court saying, "We don't think this is correct to exclude those individuals and to limit us to 10% of damages because of it." The Appeal Court didn't treat our case. They dismissed it without going into the merits. They gave some basic reasoning on why, and we took that to the Supreme Court, which finally after all these years has given the decision, and the decision was as follows. We had four grounds of appeal. Three of them were mainly in relation to the inclusion of the indicted individuals.
In that regard, the court found completely in our favor and said not only did the Appeal Court make a mistake in disregarding our claim there, the Supreme Court also went an extra step further, something that they do not often do or don't always do. They made some direct comments against the first instance arbitration decision directly. Our lawyers are quite happy with this. This is something we did not achieve any of the cassation judgments in the criminal process. More or less, they've said it was not correct to have excluded these individuals for any of the reasons given for excluding them. They've asked a new section of the Court of Appeal to reconsider the matter, basically with this instruction, that it was not correct to exclude the actions and statements and documents signed by those people.
We believe, obviously, that that helps us quite a bit going forward. A big part of our case in the civil matters relies on what has been proven in the other courts. What did these people actually do in order to get access to the feed-in tariff subsidy schemes, and what was told to us and what was sold to us? Coming back to that in a second. In relation to the fourth ground, this was the 10% limitation of liability. Court also found in our favor. They said the Appeal Court should have treated this. They should have taken into consideration a few factors and a few rules of law that they did not. They left it there. They didn't go into as much detail as they did with the first three in relation to the exclusion of the indicted directors.
They found in our favor, and they said you have to reassess this matter in light of all of it. Our claim in the original arbitration was simply, and we've talked about this in relation to other civil claims envisioned and discussed in the past. Assets were made. Those assets were made illegally. That is now proven in the criminal court. Those were then sold to EAM without giving all the details about the, of course, the illegal construction of these assets and elements. We don't believe that there should be a valid purchase contract for the purchase of illegal assets. Most law across Europe supports that. Italian law supports that. It is not legal to sell illegal goods. You cannot sell drugs. You cannot sell anything that's illegal and have a valid contract.
The Supreme Court apparently indicates an agreement with that, but they didn't come out and say it. The next step of this is the Supreme Court has ordered the Appeal Court, a new section with new judges, to reevaluate the case in light of all of that. At this point, they'll have to now consider the actions done by those who are now, we call it res judicata, finally liable for these crimes in the criminal case. Those are now inside the case and must be treated. They must reevaluate our petition to exceed the 10% liability cap in the contract. These things go hand-in-hand. The, we'll say, most direct ways to exceed these liability caps are if there's a fraud, if the fundamental object of the contract is invalid or illegal, et cetera.
Now by having these individuals back into the scope of this assessment, and given that they've been, we'll say, liable for these crimes and that process is done, we think the chances of us succeeding in these arguments have been substantially improved by this cassation ruling. The flip side of that, the negative side is we do have to go back to this court, at least for now. The lawyers are exploring all the options, of course. The order of the court is to go back to the Appeal Court and have this reassessed. Timeline for that. As I said at the start, we don't know fully yet.
However, we have been informed that it should not be anywhere close to the amount of time that we had to wait in the criminal process from when it went from the Court of Cassation to the Appeal Court back in, when was that, 2021, 2022, 2023 period. There was a long wait. Part of that was due to COVID. Part of that was due to the fact that by that point, there had been a statute of limitations as far as prison time. The civil elements for the crimes, no statute of limitations or much, much longer, so still valid and under consideration. The prison sentences in relation to those crimes had been exceeded. The court in that instance, in the criminal case, was prioritizing cases that were still within the limitation. This is what we've been told, at least.
They would prioritize cases within the limitation, ours would be delayed and delayed while they handled those. They have a backlog from the COVID period in that time. We don't have either of those issues this time. There is no limitation considerations. It's a civil case, there's no prison time even under consideration here. From what we understand, there's not the same backlog in the civil court today as there was maybe in the criminal courts back four years ago. We do not know the timeline. It'd be great for me to say it's going to be six months, one year. I don't know. All we do know is that we should not face anywhere close to the delays that we faced in the criminal process. That's what we know at this point.
Once we know the timeline, and are fairly confident in the reliability of the timeline, we'll announce it, and the expectation will be set to the market so that everyone has the same information on it. Until we know and have a reasonable understanding, there's not much more we can say on it at this point. I'm sure we'll get some questions on that. We have a Q&A at the end, completely understandable and expected. It'll be open for questions in a few minutes here. I'll end that Cassation process for now. I want to move on to the second arbitration appeal. They are related, of course. The first arbitration established our right to damages up to this 10%. The second arbitration was the one where they had to calculate these damages.
That's where we were awarded the amounts so that you see reported by the company in the reports and stock exchange notices. Those are the amounts we hope to soon start collecting. As of today, the amount in our favor is somewhere between EUR 4 million and EUR 5 million, and that is representing the 10% + interest over time awarded by the court in 2024. We had the final hearing in the appeal lodged by the counterparty in this matter. That was on the 3rd of June, if I recall correctly. This, as many of you might remember, was supposed to have happened some three or four months ago, and got postponed by the judge, not by the request from either of the parties. The judge had a need to postpone on a personal level, and that's what happened.
All of the documents and arguments had been made already many months ago, already before that March original date. There wasn't much new to be done here. The lawyers attended the court. They were asked, "Do you all agree on your final statements? Have you changed anything?" From what I understand, the answer was no. It was a very short hearing. They should take about two months to issue a decision in that. As we've stated many times before, we are hoping, of course, to just maintain, in our favor, that first instance judgment, which calculated this 10% + interest in our favor. Once that's in place, we believe we can start a proper collection of the amount. I don't want to get into too much detail on how the sausage is made in that regard, but we hope to have this decision in about two months time.
The one consideration when it comes to this two months period is the common holiday. The [Felix Feriae] for Italy is in the month of August. What we have experienced over a decade plus of being involved in the courts in Italy is things do not happen from a court level in the month of August. If for some reason the decision has not been given by the end of July, it could be that we don't receive it until the start of September. The two months becomes a little longer. That's just because the calendars are not always going for these matters in the month of August. That's why we have September on there. That, I believe, concludes it for the latest arbitration-related things here. Happy to answer questions on any of these in the Q&A session.
Okay. Thank you, Erik.
Yeah.
I suggest we start with the Q&A, and Erik, if you can keep an eye on who's lifting their hand. Please use raise hands.
Yeah, let's use the raise hand function on Teams, if you don't mind, to ask a question, because if I unmute, everyone will get too much background noise.
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[Non-English content] [ John André Sandquist]. [Non-English content] [John André]. Did you manage to unmute John André?
Yes, not allowing me to. Oh, he has to unmute himself.
Mr. [Sandquist], you need to unmute yourself. Yeah.
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Erik?
No, not yet, but we're always happy to pick up the phone.
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Okay, Mr. [Firas Ali]. You just need to unmute yourself.
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[Non-English content] Okay, [Firas].
Okay, he has typed into the chat. That is fine. Viktor, it is not related to legal, but he is asking for any updates on the rebuild and repair power plants that we have talked about in the past.
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Maybe just to add as well from what we understand, the period in which the power plant is being rebuilt, it is possible to add those months of downtime onto the end of the feed-in tariff length. If we are down for three months, we get three months of subsidy feed-in tariff added on to the end of the stated contract duration. Viktor, you understand the same?
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I saw something in chat, but [Jarl] was first here, so we'll go with Mr. [Tollefsen].
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Just respond to Mr. [Ali], had a follow up question. I think it bears just a clarification. Yes, if we'll have the electricity production and profit in about three months or so circa on trading levels. What we are talking about, we already have these power plants. We are talking about rebuilding them ground up with modern technology. They are producing now already. The plan is to take them down and bring in brand new equipment. That process should take about three months, and then they'll be back online producing. The three months I was talking about was, we have the state subsidy contracts that go through the end of, I want to say, 2031. If I remember correctly.
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If we are down for three months, we don't lose those three months of state subsidy. We will get three months added on to the end of it into 2032. Because these plants have been producing since they were built in 2011, 2012.
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I say what we say every time. If someone here has a question, but they're uncertain whether they should ask it. In our experience, if one person has the question, dozens have the same question, so please feel free. We receive emails often from shareholders asking many of the same questions. You are not alone if you want to know something. In the meantime, Viktor, we have something in the chat here.
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European Commission, EUR 23 billion. We need to wait and see what sort of schemes the Italians put in. Hello? Hello? Hello? I heard someone there.
Yeah.
In the meantime, Gabriel Wilson, first arbitration, what's the potential award to EAM? Under the award as is, you have to take the first arbitration and second together today. I know you're asking about future, but I want to establish what the current situation is. The first arbitration decision came in 2019. It said EAM has right to damages, capped at 10%. Didn't say what the total was or what 10% was. Second arbitration, that was their job. That's what they assessed. They assessed the damages and capped it at 10%, and they put those damages into categories. We've talked about this a few times. There was an independent expert placed with the responsibility of calculating these things.
The contract value amount directly of just outlay was EUR 30 million back in 2014, and they had the job of saying, "Not all the plants were delivered, but we overpaid for some." Factor that in. We still have four of the power plants that are producing, as we're talking about rebuilding some of them, so that has to be factored in. They found in that first or second arbitration that EUR 23 and something million was, or at that stage, the reasonable calculation of the initial outlay of the EUR 30 capped at 10%, hence the EUR 2.3 million growing every year because of interest. What they also found was EAM had other expenses and other losses because of this that were in excess of that initial EUR 30 million cash transfer.
That's how you get into the independent expert stating that if EAM was entitled to the direct damages from the event before any consequential damage or negligence provisions, extra damages, and all that's where they come up with somewhere between EUR 40 million and EUR 60 million.
Yeah.
That's just in direct loss before you start adding everything on top of the bill. What did the first arbitration, or the question was, what is the potential award to EAM? What we're trying to accomplish is basically a declaration that the initial share purchase contract is not valid. It's null and void. That has the consequence in that very first instance, or not first instance, but first, we'll say consequence of an immediate repayment of the price paid. That's where you get the EUR 30 million less in that scenario, less the value of the power plants we have, or they have to be factored in to the amount in some way.
The very first would be the 90% remaining of that first, and then the right to start the lawsuit for the other amounts described by the arbitration financial expert and any of the other things we've talked about over the years, which were not assessed by the financial expert.
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Just perhaps to clarify that, the first arbitration was not given the assignment to assess the full value of what EAM should get. They were given the assignment to assess whether or not that first contract is valid or not, and if not, to demand a return of that money. That doesn't mean that's what we believe is the final status in that case. That's when Viktor's talking about all these other amounts. There's still some things to consider going forward. These things come in stages. Second arbitration, 10% award of, what is it? Somewhere between EUR 4 million-EUR 5 million today. Next one, maybe it grows. Next one, maybe it grows. Or as I see [Kalle] 1345 here, would you consider a settlement? Like we said before, we're always happy to pick up the phone.
I don't want to get into any specific details about how these talks have gone in the past. We're open to it, but so far nothing has ever materialized in that.
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Again, phones on, happy to entertain these things. We'll see how it goes as time goes on. I'm sure there will come a point, perhaps, maybe not, but there could come a point where everyone is ready to stop doing this all the time. We'll see. There has to be some mutual understanding of the truth of events before that means anything.
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Yeah, there's a couple. There's a question: "Is it possible after the next one to appeal further up the system?" Let's say yes, it's always a possibility, but whether or not the appeal gets accepted to be treated depends on what the court says. We have the situation where the Supreme Court's already given a particular decision with some instructions. If those instructions are followed and the next court comes to, we'll say, a decision in line with the Supreme Court, theoretically, yes, it's possible to lodge the appeal, but whether or not it's taken under consideration for any reason is not guaranteed. It could be a short process or a long process in that regard if it comes to it. It's a theoretical right, yeah. Then we have Viktor: "Any indication of returns you shareholders will get on new money invested?
For example, shareholders contribute the NOK 55 million today, EBITDA and cash flow management future. That's all detailed in the stuff on the website, which I've just posted here.
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You go to eam.no. There should be a link on the landing page, the home page that takes you directly to the prospectus page. The prospectus will come in the near future, what we have done in the meantime is uploaded the company presentation, which is a longer form version of what you saw here today, along with the investment memorandum, which you can see. I've also put that in the chat, you should be able to click the link there and it'll take you directly to it.
Anything else, Erik, on the chat?
I don't see anything in the chat.
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As usual, this goes by saying we are available to answer, we'll say clarification questions via email. We get some, we'll say throughout the week, every week for years. We are happy to answer questions on things we've discussed if they were not clear. I understand that there's a lot of questions about what will you do in this scenario, what will happen in that scenario if you win this or if you lose that, what's the plan? If things are not communicated to the market, we're not really going to be able to be sharing future plans on those matters. If there are requests for clarification because you didn't understand something presented, we are happy to engage and respond and make sure that the understanding is shared amongst everyone.
What we cannot do, and I'm only saying this because it's been asked a few times, is we'll say delve into speculations about what the company planning would be in the future, especially if those have not been already indicated to the market.
Okay, I think we'll end there, Erik. Thank you everyone. [Non-English content]