It said it had paused property installation payments "pending verification of the status of Sunawayo title and environmental permit" held by the vendors.

It also had notified the vendors of an alleged breach of certain disclosure representations in the sales and purchase agreement, struck in August 2020.

Silver Elephant had made one payment of US$300,000 but said it had no further contractual obligations unless it wished to pursue the acquisition.

It has spent C$1 million on drilling at Sunawayo, according to its latest presentation, reporting high-grade results including 2m at 645g/t silver, 5.12% lead, 1.34% zinc and 0.19% copper from the project earlier this month.

Silver Elephant described Sunawayo on Friday as a "small, non-material" part of its overall strategy.

It's focused on its flagship Pulacayo silver-lead-zinc project in Bolivia's Potosi department, where it outlined an indicated 107 million ounce silver resource in October.

It also acquired the El Triunfo gold-silver-lead-zinc project in Bolivia in 2020 and reported 48.9m at 1.45g/t gold-equivalent in the first drilling results in November.

Silver Elephant is moving to return to being a silver exploration company.

The company said it was working on its proposed dual spin-outs of its wholly-owned subsidiaries, Flying Nickel Mining and Nevada Vanadium Mining.

It had raised $3.75 million at 37.5c per share in February for exploration, working capital and general corporate purposes.

Its shares (TSX: ELF) lost 6.5% on Friday to close at 36c, capitalising it at $72.7 million (US$60 million).