Hong Kong media accused Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu yesterday of accumulating a personal fortune on the back of bribes from Chinese steel mills, stepping up a Chinese language media campaign against Rio Tinto and in favour of tighter information controls.
Wen Wei Po, a prominent Hong Kong newspaper sympathetic to Beijing, cited an investigation insider to claim Mr Hu improperly acquired personal assets, including a couple of villas each worth more than 100 million yuan ($17 million).
As well as allegedly bribing managers at big steel mills for commercial information, the report claimed Mr Hu accepted bribes from small steel mills in return for giving them bigger import quotas from Rio Tinto.
Rio Tinto’s iron ore chief, Sam Walsh, said last month that allegations that employees were involved in bribery of officials at Chinese steel mills were without foundation.
Last month, Chinese officials said they had proof to back allegations that Rio Tinto, Mr Hu and three Chinese employees had engaged in stealing state secrets and bribery on a huge scale.
That evidence has not been released, and previous Chinese language reports about Rio Tinto’s dealings have been called into question.
Yesterday, Chinese authorities appeared to back away from extraordinary allegations at the weekend that Rio Tinto’s espionage activities had stripped more than $123 billion from China over six years.
The website that hosted the report containing the allegations, http:// www.baomi.org, which is affiliated with China’s National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets, was made inaccessible late yesterday morning.
The author of the report, a provincial state secrets official, Jiang Ruqin, told Bloomberg yesterday that his explosive allegations were merely based on previous Chinese official media reports and they “represent my own opinion”.
Mr Jiang’s allegations undermined the Chinese case against the company because the claims suggest that Rio Tinto had improperly gained an amount that was more than twice the total of Rio’s global iron ore sales over the sixyears.
Premier Colin Barnett, just back from a visit to China, dismissed claims that Rio Tinto had stripped $123 billion from the country.
“It isn’t simply about Stern Hu but also relates to wider political issues such as Federal members of Parliament meeting with the Dalai Lama,” he said. “It relates to the leader of Uighur people from the US being over here visiting Australia.”
Source: The Weat Australian
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