IMA’s Navidad appeal dismissed; Aquiline pleased

Most likely once and for all, the highly desirable Navidad silver deposit in Argentina belongs to Toronto-based junior Aquiline Resources (AQI-T). Today, the British Columbia Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal launched by Joe Grosso’s IMA Exploration (IMR-T) of an original judgment on July 14, 2006, that granted the property to Aquiline.

In a release, Aquiline’s president and CEO, Marc Henderson commented:: “For all of us at Aquiline and for all our supporters, this is the outcome we hoped for, and the timing is excellent given the ongoing exploration activity at Navidad, which we have operated since November 2006. We look forward to returning to what our shareholders deserve from us – the development of a world-ranking silver deposit in Argentina.”

The full judgment can be downloaded here and an Aquiline conference call is scheduled for Friday at 10 am ET.

IMA says it will “seek leave to appeal the judgment to the Supreme Court of Canada.”

Apprently IMA still had a few true believers left on board: the stock closed the day down 56% to 44 cents on 3.6 million shares traded. Aquiline was off a nickel at $10.30 on almost half a million shares traded.

IMA had first staked the Navidad site on the northern border of Chubut province in late 2002, but Aquiline successfully disputed that IMA only realized Navidad’s potential through unlawful use of confidential exploration data accessed when IMA was bidding for Newmont Mining‘s (NMC-T, NEM-N) Calcatreu gold project, later won by Aquiline.