Lawyer: Shanghai court finishes trial of 4 Rio Tinto staff on bribery, secrets theft charges

Shanghai trial of Rio Tinto staff ends, no verdict

SHANGHAI — The trial in Shanghai of four employees of mining giant Rio Tinto on charges of taking bribes and stealing commercial secrets ended Wednesday as expected without a verdict being announced.

Defense lawyer Tao Wuping said the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court finished hearing the case by midday, somewhat earlier than anticipated, because proceedings went very smoothly.

Tao would not comment on any details of the secrecy charges against the four, who include three Chinese and one Australian citizen, Stern Hu, who was heading Rio Tinto’s iron ore business in China at the time of his arrest.

The four pleaded guilty to charges they took bribes, although they contested the amounts allegedly involved in some cases, lawyers have said.

Those attending the sessions regarding theft of commercial secrets were ordered by the court not to disclose any information, Tao said.

The Rio Tinto case is seen by many working in China as a signal that the Communist-ruled government is subjecting foreign companies to increasingly close scrutiny, raising the risks of running afoul of secrecy rules that are themselves kept secret.

However, Tao said the business secrets allegedly stolen by the Rio Tinto employees were straightforward commercial information.

“The case is not as complicated as the public may think,” he said.

Hu and the others were detained last July in a case seen as linked to Beijing’s anger over high prices it paid for iron ore — a key commodity in China’s booming economy. Rio Tinto, based in London and Melbourne, is one of the top suppliers of ore to China and a key industry negotiator in price talks with China’s state-owned steel mills.

Though the arrests and prosecution of the four Rio Tinto staff raised friction with Australia, relations appeared to have returned to business as usual by the time the trial got underway this week.

Rio Tinto’s chief executive, Tom Albanese, was in Beijing on Monday for a top-level executive forum that included Premier Wen Jiabao. At the gathering, Albanese emphasized his company’s desire to improve its ties with China. Last week, Rio Tinto announced an agreement with China’s state-run aluminum giant Chinalco to develop an iron ore reserve in the West African country of Guinea.

On Wednesday, Australia’s resources minister, Martin Ferguson, announced a deal for Queensland to supply LNG from coal seam gas to China’s state-run offshore energy company CNOOC in a 20 year deal with BG Group.

“It’s very clear that right through the difficulties over Stern Hu, we have maintained a healthy business relationship with China that has been mutually beneficial,” Ferguson told Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio.

Ferguson would not comment on the trial itself.

“Let’s leave it till the dust settles and then see what is the appropriate way forward,” he told ABC.

Australia’s consul-general in Shanghai attended the court sessions on the bribery charges. His government formally protested the court’s decision to close sessions handling charges of industrial espionage, which began Tuesday afternoon.

Virtually all cases that go to court in China end in conviction, though verdicts and sentencing are sometimes announced long after a trial ends.

“So there may well be some time, a matter of days between the end of the hearing today and those further processes,” Australia’s foreign minister, Stephen Smith, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Tao said he believed the court would finish the cases relatively soon. Shanghai authorities may be keen to finish up the process before the May 1 opening of its showcase World Expo — the city’s biggest international event ever.

Smith declined to say whether he was surprised by Hu’s admissions on bribery charges or whether he thought they were made under duress.

“I’m not proposing to be drawn on a commentary on the trial until the trial processes have completed,” Smith told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio in Canberra.

Few details of the allegations against Hu and the others have been released. The four were formally arrested in August and have not been allowed any public comment.

Earlier Chinese reports suggested the Rio Tinto employees may have been caught up in an effort to control information exchanged during the iron ore pricing talks, where Rio Tinto was acting as lead negotiator for the miners.

The admissions of bribe-taking were a blow for Rio Tinto at a time when it is striving to restore good relations with China. After initially staunchly defending its staff, the company recently urged the court to handle the case in a quick and transparent way.

Associated Press reporter Rod McGuirk in Canberra and Associated Press researcher Ji Chen in Shanghai contributed to this report.