Rio Tinto’s Guinean payment scandal has deepened, with bitter rival Beny Steinmetz threatening to sue for billions of dollars in damages after alleging the leaked emails at the centre of the scandal show Rio had a hand in stripping his company of valuable iron ore tenements in the African nation.
The consultant who was paid $US10.5 million by Rio Tinto for helping recover iron ore concessions in Guinea had “privileged” access to the African nation’s president and had “acted hand in hand with Guinean authorities” it has been claimed on French television.
A former minister of mines of Guinea, Mahmoud Thiam has told Bloomberg that the head of Rio Tinto’s Guinea operation, Steven Din, offered him a bribe six years ago.
Rio Tinto, long the bluest of blue-chip companies, finds itself mired in a corruption scandal over how it was able to secure a fabulously large iron ore project in the jungles of the Simandou Mountains, in the historically corruption-challenged west African nation of Guinea.
If you want to do business in the west African nation of Guinea it seems there is a good chance you will bump into Francois de Combret.
World number two miner Rio Tinto is exiting the world’s largest mining project, by selling its stake in Guinea’s Simandou iron ore to partner Chinalco, potentially opening up a new path to development for the $20 billion project.
The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation is leaving the project, according to reports, having exercised a right to ask Rio Tinto (LN:RIO) and partner Chinalco to buy out its 4.6% holding in the joint venture.
An Aim-listed diamond explorer is planning a “transformation deal” that will create Sierra Leone’s second-biggest diamond mine from two “high-grade” deposits.
Controversial Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz has offloaded Tonguma, one of the Sierra Leone diamonds projects owned by his London-based BSGR subsidiary Octea Mining, to AIM-listed Stellar Diamonds.
Romanian National Anti corruption Directorate (DNA) has asked for the temporary arrest of group of Israeli businessmen including Beny Steinmetz, Tal Silberstein and Moshe Agavi.