Emerging from Seclusion in Ottawa While Inquiries Proceed
Letter from Maurice Strong to Pranay Gupte, received by e-mail on June 9, 2005
I read your article of April 29th only after we had talked on the telephone. Amongst its several distortions and errors of fact I would point out:
1) That I did not authorize a purchase by Ontario Hydro of the 31,000 acres of forest land in Costa Rica you refer to. Any such purchase was done only some time after I left Ontario Hydro and I had nothing to do with its authorization.
2) The modest 12 unit resort we built on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica cost something like $700,000 not $35,000,000 and although there was some confusion as to whether it was constructed on overlapping Indian land this was entirely resolved to the Indians’ satisfaction and it was clear that the original concern of it being on Indian land was entirely due to an inaccurate survey.
I would have expected that you would have checked your facts better, Pranay, and that you would have presented the story in a more objective manner than you did. In any case, I would now insist that you correct these errors in fact.