The Minister of Environment, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, appeared in front to the Environmental Commission of the Legislative Assembly today, to respond several questions regarding the damage caused by illegal mining in the area and the economic losses that the extraction of gold represents for the country.

In the past, Rodríguez had mentioned that gold panners could have taken as much as $1.5 million in gold; however, other groups and recently deputies from the National Liberation Party (PLN), accused the Minister of minimizing the damages in the area.

Rodríguez, who criticized the position of the deputies due to the decisions of past administrations of PLN in environmental matters, has now admitted that the amount is much larger:

¨I was completely wrong, I ventured to give those numbers because we were making estimations, yes: I said it and it was a mistake. The information I had was not conclusive and I thought I was contributing positively giving the numbers. I am now told that preliminary results show that they could have stolen close to $90 million USD from Costa Rica¨.

Rodríguez continued on to say that he was going to investigate further on why the information was not given to him at an earlier stage.