Word: rio
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When the Chinese government announced earlier this week the formal arrest of four Shanghai-based executives of global mining giant Rio Tinto - one Australian citizen and three Chinese nationals - it seemed a deliberate ratcheting down of a case that had stunned foreign investors in the country. After all, Beijing had effectively dropped the case's most ominous element: the charge that Rio's Stern Hu and his three colleagues had allegedly stolen "state secrets," in part by bribing executives of Chinese steel companies, who are Rio's largest buyers of iron ore. Under a state-secrets charge, the four...
...tabloid journalists from Britain's Daily Express broke the news that Biggs was hiding out in Rio de Janeiro. Scotland Yard's subsequent efforts to extradite him were foiled after Biggs fathered a child, Michael, with Raimunda de Castro, a nightclub dancer and alleged prostitute; Brazilian law protected the parents of Brazilian citizens. And while Biggs could not legally work in Brazil, he was able to live freely and profit from coffee mugs and T shirts branded with his name and image. (TIME flashback 1981: "Biggs Bagged...
...other country, with any other company, at any other time, it might be considered a routine case of corporate espionage. But the arrests earlier this month of four employees of the mining giant Rio Tinto have thrown relations between China and Australia into an uproar and cast a dangerous chill on China's foreign business partners. On July 5, the Shanghai State Security Bureau arrested Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu, a Chinese-born Australian, and three Chinese employees on suspicion of stealing state secrets. While China's murky criminal-justice system makes it difficult to unearth any specifics...
...materials. But recently, wild fluctuations in commodity prices and friction over trade deals have increased tension between overseas iron-ore suppliers and China's steel producers. The arrests came weeks after the collapse of a bid by state-owned aluminum company Chinalco to invest $19.5 billion in Rio Tinto; the timing has prompted some observers to suggest that the charges are retaliatory...
Meanwhile, negotiations over iron-ore contracts, an annual ritual that has been particularly heated this year, may be another factor. Chinese steel producers have been pushing for a discount of up to 50% on the price agreed on last year with Rio Tinto. But with the negotiations stretching long past their original June 30 deadline, steadily climbing prices for iron ore have steelmakers sweating. "Clearly the Chinese insistence that the price be cut further no longer can be sustained," says Jim Lennon, a Macquarie Bank analyst, who notes that talks "have gotten increasingly acrimonious...