Rio Tinto employee admits receiving bribes in China

BEIJING - A court in Shanghai tried four executives from the Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto Ltd on charges of commercial bribery Monday with the highest-profile defendant reportedly pleading guilty to receiving illegal payments.

The Australian government said Australian citizen Stern Hu had “made some admissions” Monday about two large payments he was accused of accepting.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Hu was accused of receiving two payments of 1 million yuan ($146,000) and $790,000.

“Mr Hu has made some admissions concerning these amounts,” the department said in a statement.

“The trial is continuing, and as a consequence, we are not in a position to say anything further at this point,” the statement said.

Hu, 47, was tried with three Chinese citizens employed by Rio Tinto: Liu Caikui, Ge Minqiang and Wang Yong.

The US financial news agency Bloomberg quoted Liu’s lawyer, Tao Wuping, as saying Hu had pleaded guilty to bribery charges.

Liu also planned to plead guilty to charges of accepting 3.7 million yuan in bribes, Tao told Bloomberg.

Tom Albanese, Rio Tinto’s chief executive, expressed concern about the trial Monday but said he would “respectfully await the outcome”.

“This issue is obviously of great concern to us as it would be for any company operating in China,” Albanese said during a speech at the China Development Forum in Beijing.

“I can only say we respectfully await the outcome of the Chinese legal process,” he said.

If found guilty, the four men could each face a prison sentence of up to seven years for stealing commercial secrets and up to 20 years for accepting bribes, Chinese state media quoted legal experts as saying.

Before the trial, the case was seen by Western business analysts as a test of China’s legal treatment of foreign businesses operating in the country.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said last week that “the world will be watching” China’s handling of the case.

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the trial was “just an individual commercial case” that “should not be politicised”.

Hu, the head of Rio’s iron-ore business in China, has been held since July. He stands accused of industrial espionage and of bribing officials to get a higher price for Rio’s iron-ore exports.

Australian diplomats were expected to be allowed to witness the part of the trial dealing with bribery allegations but were told they would be excluded from deliberations on commercial spying.

The trial at the Shanghai Number One Intermediate People’s Court was scheduled to end Wednesday.

The diplomats have only been allowed to meet Hu once a month and were barred from discussing his case with the China-born executive.

Rio had previously denied all the allegations against the four executives.

Despite the charges against its employees, Rio signed an agreement Friday with the state-run China Aluminum Corp to develop the Simandou iron-ore reserve in the West African state of Guinea.