http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/world/asia/24cnd-newmont.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Indonesian Court Clears U.S. Mining Company By DONALD GREENLEES Published: April 24, 2007 MANADO, Indonesia, April 24 - An Indonesian court today acquitted the Newmont Mining Corporation and one of its senior executives of criminal charges of polluting a bay here with toxic waste from a now-defunct gold mine. Dimas Ardian/Bloomberg News Richard Ness, the director of the Newmont Mining Corporation division controlling the mine, at the trial today in Manado, Indonesia. Ending a trial that lasted 21 months and pitted an emboldened national environmental lobby against the giant American mining company, a panel of judges found that there was no evidence to support criminal charges that Newmont polluted Buyat Bay in northern Sulawesi with toxins including arsenic and mercury. The head of the Newmont unit controlling the mine, Richard Ness, an American citizen, faced a three-year jail term and a $55,000 fine if convicted on the charges. Prosecutors had also requested that the company be fined $110,000. But the chief judge of the Manado District Court, Ridwan Damanik, said that the prosecutors presented a case that was so weak, even after a lengthy police investigation and the month-long detention of five Newmont executives, including an American and an Australian, that it should never have resulted in criminal proceedings. "The police evidence doesn't stand up," Judge Damanik told a packed courtroom. Both environmentalists and investors around the world watched the case closely, and saw it as a vital test of the balance between economic development and environmental protection in Indonesia, a country with some of the richest mineral deposits in the world, including gold, copper, nickel and coal. Reading from a 260-page judgment, Judge Damanik said in court that the prosecution failed to show that Newmont's system of depositing mine waste at the bottom of the bay through a half-mile-long pipe had polluted the environment or caused health problems to local villagers. Mr. Ness, 57, who was forbidden to leave Indonesia for a large part of the criminal proceedings, said today that he was pleased that the judges had acknowledged fundamental flaws in the legal procedures that allowed the case to get to court. "We are all thrilled with the fact that after 2 ½ years, we have been exonerated from the horrendous allegations that were brought before us originally," Mr. Ness said in an interview following the verdict. He added: "We should never have even gotten this far; we shouldn't have been in court." But Purwanta Sudarmaji, the state prosecutor, said in an interview later that he intended to appeal the verdict. Indonesian law allows prosecutors to appeal acquittals within 14 days. Environmental activists also expressed disappointment with the verdict. About 1,000 anti-Newmont protesters gathered today outside the court, which was cordoned off by a heavy police presence. "Newmont was found not guilty because of legal procedure, but not on the substance," said Siti Maemunah, coordinator of the Mining Advocacy Network, an environmental group, in an interview from Jakarta. Investors and some senior government officials feared that a guilty verdict against Newmont, one of the world's biggest miners, would be a severe blow to the growth of Indonesia's mineral industry at a time when the pace of investment is already at an historic low. Environmentalists hoped the case would encourage officials to be less lenient in overseeing extractive industries like mining and logging, which can devastate large areas of countryside. For Newmont, which is based in Denver, the case also became a focus of shareholder concern about the environmental and social standards adopted by the mining company in developing countries, where regulations are often less stringent than in the United States. A group of institutional investors with links to religious organizations have proposed a resolution to set up independent monitoring of the environmental and social impact of Newmont's operations. In a first for an American mining company, Newmont's board plans to endorse the adoption of the resolution at its annual meeting in Wilmington, Del., today. The case against the company's local unit, Newmont Minahasa Raya, centered on claims made in 2004 by a doctor and some local people that pollutants from the mine caused a variety of illnesses, including skin rashes and tumors. They alleged that a baby had died as a result of exposure to the mine's toxins. A subsequent police investigation, which involved the testing of samples from Buyat Bay, found unsafe levels of heavy metals, and formed the basis of the criminal charges. The prosecution alleged that the waste pumped into the bay polluted the environment, caused health damage to the population and was done without the proper waste disposal permits. But the prosecution's case was weakened when the doctor who brought the initial health claims retracted her statement in a letter sent to police. Newmont was also able to point to several studies, including from the World Health Organization and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, that showed there was no danger to villagers' health. The August 2004 report from the Australian research organization said the absence of elevated metal concentrations in fish indicated that "metal availability in the waters of Buyat Bay and the surrounding marine waters is not excessive and would not be considered a polluted environment." Although environmental activists and some officials in the Ministry of the Environment contested the reports showing pollutants to be well within safe levels, the judges sided with the defense's argument that the reports showed that the mine was operating safely. "There also is not enough evidence that people suffered from health problems," Mr. Damanik, the chief judge, said.
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