The Business Times, December 13, 2010
(SYDNEY) Mining company Rio Tinto informed Chinese authorities that it had found unexplained amounts of cash in the homes of jailed employees, according to a US diplomatic cable published on Saturday.
The cable, one of thousands to be dumped on whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, said the Anglo-Australian miner found A$4,440 (S$5,720) in the room of one of its four employees after they were jailed in China.
Written by US government representatives in Taiwan and obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald, the cable said that Rio's investigators had also found one of its Shanghai staff had received A$20,000 in 'dividends' from private Chinese steel mills.
'Rio's internal investigations have uncovered no evidence of employees stealing secrets but have found two employees holding relatively small amounts of money from sources they cannot verify,' the cable said. 'Rio reported this finding to the Public Security Bureau.'
The Sept 16, 2009 cable does not make clear whether Stern Hu, the only Australian among the four executives, was one of the employees with the cash.
The four Rio executives were arrested in July 2009 during contentious iron-ore contract talks between top mining companies and the steel industry in China, the world's largest consumer of the raw material.
Hu was jailed for 10 years in March after a Shanghai court convicted him of taking kickbacks worth millions of dollars from Chinese steel firms and stealing corporate secrets during 2009 iron-ore talks. Rio sacked the four after the verdict, lamenting their 'deplorable' actions.
The company said on Saturday it would be making no comment on the cable. -- AFP
Related Articles:
Rio Tinto's Australian operations hit by rain
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.