Govt confident of settling civil suit against Newmont
Thursday, July 7 2005 - 04:48 PM WIB
The government has filed a US$133.6 million civil lawsuit against Newmont over allegations that waste from its gold mine on the island of Sulawesi sickened dozens of villagers.
Newmont has repeatedly insisted it did nothing wrong. Conflicting test results have complicated efforts to bring the case to trial.
Economic Minister Aburizal Bakrie said the government would meet later Thursday to begin drawing up a strategy to settle the civil case. He would not discuss the government's legal strategy but expressed confidence that a settlement could be worked out by the end of the year.
"I remember the case of the Exxon Valdez. They were penalized by the government," Bakrie said of the 1989 grounding of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker, which spilled millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska. Exxon spent US$3 billion cleaning up the spill and is still appealing a 1994 federal court ruling ordering it to pay an additional US$5 billion.
"This is what we are going to do as well," he said. "The Exxon Valdez (case) was (worth) billions of dollars but it (the Newmont case) definitely won't be that big. There was certainly pollution but there are different opinions whether the pollution caused health problems."
The gold mining company's Indonesian subsidiary, Newmont Minahasa Raya has been accused of dumping toxic waste into Buyat Bay, allegedly causing dozens of Sulawesi residents to develop skin diseases and tumors.
The government is also considering filing criminal charges against the company and its top official in Indonesia, Richard Ness, for corporate crimes. On Tuesday, a prosecutor said five other Newmont employees _ an Australian, American and three Indonesians _ would not be charged because of a lack of evidence.(*)