Smoking Gun: Bribery and Corruption
Skirting Responsibilities
Toxic Enterprise

The self-proclaimed "gold standard for the 21st Century," Denver-based Newmont Mining recently became the largest gold mining corporation in the world following its acquisition of two other major international mining companies. With operations in the Australia, Peru, Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, North America, Turkey and Uzbekistan, Newmont had revenues of $ 1.66 billion in 2001 and $1.82 billion in 2000.

Smoking Gun: Bribery and Corruption

Newmont claims to be committed to corporate responsibility by "building trust through partnerships with stakeholders, and demonstrating integrity, creativity and excellence in all behaviors." However, the Montesinos scandals in 1998 exposed Newmont's sleight of hand in Peru's judicial process.

In 1998, Newmont allegedly paid Vladimir Montesinos to bribe a judge to rule in its favor in an ownership dispute concerning Yanacocha. Montesinos - Peru's spy-chief at the time - is on tape urging a Supreme Court Justice to vote in favor of Newmont or otherwise face reprisals from the United States. The Newmont tape is one of hundreds of recordings where Montesinos is seen accepting kickbacks for political favors. The scandal forced then-President Alberto Fujimori to step down in November 2000.

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Skirting Responsibilities

The company also claims to be committed to "excellence with regard to environmental matters." Yet its history involving toxic waste belies this claim.

In June 2000, almost 300 pounds of mercury from the company's Yanacocha mine in Peru accidentally spilled from a truck onto the road. Newmont had failed to warn local residents in advance of the danger of the mercury shipments through their communities, and many of them picked up the metallic liquid after the spill and took it home, thinking it was valuable. Within three weeks, between 200 and 300 people were hospitalized with mercury poisoning. The community of Choropampa is still feeling the devastating aftermath of the spill, many residents believe that Newmont has not adquately compensated them for the economic and social costs that the community has incurred."

The mercury spill gained worldwide attention and highlighted the much broader story of Newmont's toxic impact. While the company touts what it calls its commitment to "transparent participatory approaches" and acting as "a catalyst for integrated sustainable development," the company's record seems to suggest otherwise.

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Toxic Enterprise

Newmont's Peruvian mine - spotlighted on the company's website as an example of the company's commitment to social development - has been a focal point for concerns about the mining giant's toxic waste. Located at a high altitude near the city of Cajamarca in northern Peru, Yanacocha is the second largest gold mine in the world and Latin America's largest. The mine's equity is owned 51.35 percent by Newmont, 43.65 percent by Buenaventura of Peru, and five percent by the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group. In 2001, Yanacocha produced 1.9 million ounces of gold.

As at Newmont's other mining sites, the Yanacocha operation uses the "cyanide heap leaching" process to extract gold from the ore. The toxic waste generated by this mining practice, combined with other toxic byproducts from the mining process, has entered the streams and rivers in the Cajamarca region around Yanacocha. According to a study by the Peruvian's government's Technical and Scientific Commission in 2000, levels of aluminum, zinc, copper, iron and manganese significantly exceeded World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines at multiples river and stream sites in the area. At one site, aluminum concentrations exceeded WHO limits by more than 15 times.

Newmont has failed to disclose critical information about its toxic releases to the Peruvian public, but information concerning the company's operations in the U.S. underscore the likely extent of its toxic impact in Peru and elsewhere around the world. Under the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA), Newmont has been forced to tell the American public that the company released 260,600,210 million pounds of arsenic compounds, 9,920,143 million pounds of lead compounds and 1,363,000 million pounds of mercury compounds in the United States alone.

Yet Newmont has not responded to a request from Friends of the Earth in April 2002 to release data comparable to the TRI for its overseas operations, including the Yanacocha mine. Because this information is not being disclosed, it is simply unknown how many millions of pounds of toxins Newmont Mining Corporation - and the entire mining industry for that matter - are releasing outside the United States.

A corporate accountability framework such as the proposed International Right to Know legislation would require corporations like Newmont Mining to:

- Disclose comparable information required under the Section 313 - known as the Toxics Release Inventory - of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA), which requires disclosure of a facility's releases of specified toxic substances to land, air and water.

- IRTK also would include disclosure of hazardous chemicals in the workplace, in accordance with U.S. law under EPCRA.

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