Jakarta, Indonesia – Indonesian prosecutors said Tuesday that they would press charges against six executives from the world’s largest gold miner, Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp, over a controversial pollution case being closely watched by foreign investors.
N.E. Worotikan, the chief prosecutor in North Sulawesi province, told Reuters in Jakarta that his office was waiting for a final dossier from police, adding he hoped to file charges by mid-December.
Other prosecutors said separate charges would be filed against the Newmont unit involved in the case, PT Newmont Minahasa Raya, in its capacity as a corporate entity. The six executives comprise two Americans, an Australian and three Indonesians.
“As soon as we receive the dossier, we will prepare the indictment, and hopefully by mid-December, it will be handed over to the court,” Worotikan said.
In Indonesia, the lodging of the indictment with a court amounts to the filing of formal charges.
A government-commissioned probe has found that sediment in Buyat Bay in North Sulawesi, near a gold mine run by Newmont Minahasa Raya, had significant levels of arsenic and mercury.
Newmont maintains the bay, 1,400 miles northeast of Jakarta, was not contaminated by its mining and said it followed Indonesian laws.
Rubi Purnomo, a Newmont spokesman in Jakarta, said the company had not heard about the prosecution’s intentions.
“We will continue to cooperate with the investigation. We are confident the evidence will show there is no pollution at Buyat Bay and that our operations are safe,” Purnomo said.
The government-commissioned findings were the latest of several studies on Buyat Bay after some villagers filed a $543 million lawsuit against Newmont, charging waste from the mine had caused serious illnesses and ruined the local fishing industry.
Newmont has said it was vindicated by two earlier studies – one by the Indonesian government and another by the World Health Organization – which concluded Buyat Bay was not polluted.
Indonesian police already had named the executives as suspects while prosecutors decided whether to charge them. Five were detained for weeks, and Worotikan said they could be picked up again.
Charges of breaching environmental rules carry jail terms of up to 15 years in Indonesia if it can be proved that people died or became seriously ill as a result of pollution.
Industry organizations have agreed with the U.S. Embassy that the handling of the case, especially the detention of the executives, could be a hurdle to foreign investment.
