Jakarta, Indonesia – Indonesian authorities have filed a lawsuit against a subsidiary of Denver-based Newmont Mining Corp., seeking $133.6 million in compensation from the company for allegedly polluting a bay off Sulawesi island, officials said today.
The Ministry of Environment filed the lawsuit Wednesday in South Jakarta District Court, government attorney Bambang Widjojanto said.
The lawsuit accuses PT Newmont Minahasa Raya and its president director, Robert Hubert Ness, of creating pollution that damaged the environment and caused skin diseases for people living near Buyat Bay in northern Sulawesi province, he said.
“It is clear that Newmont Minahasa Raya has dumped its waste and heavy metal into the air and waters around its operation site,” Widjojanto said.
“Therefore the state ministry of environment demands that the company and its director pay compensation of $117.6 million for material losses and $16 million for other damages,” he added.
Suratno, a clerk at South Jakarta District Court, confirmed the suit had been filed and said a panel of judges would be named to deal with the case within the next three weeks.
Luhut Pangaribuan, an attorney for PT Newmont Minahasa Raya, described the lawsuit as “strange and shocking.”
“Laboratory results have clearly shown that there was no pollution in the bay at all,” Pangaribuan said.
Last year, tests on the bay’s water produced conflicting results.
The World Health Organization and an initial Ministry of Environment report found the water unpolluted. But a subsequent ministry study found arsenic levels in the seabed were 100 times higher at the waste-dumping site than in other parts of the bay.
Newmont stopped mining two years ago at the Sulawesi site, 1,300 miles northeast of the capital, Jakarta, after extracting all the gold it could, but kept processing ore there until Aug. 31, when the mine was permanently shut.
