Prosecutor says evidence vs Newmont "incomplete"

Indonesian police have yet to assemble a strong enough case to back up allegations that U.S. mining giant Newmont Mining Corp. (NEM) polluted a bay in central Indonesia, state prosecutors said Friday.

North Sulawesi prosecutor Robert Ilat said the dossier of evidence submitted by police to them last month was "incomplete", Associated Press reported.

Police have accused Newmont Minahasa Raya, a unit of Denver-based Newmont, of polluting a bay on Sulawesi island, causing villagers to develop skin diseases and tumors.

Last month, they submitted a dossier of evidence against five company executives, including an American and an Australian, accusing them of corporate crimes. If found guilty, they could face up to 15 years in jail.

But Ilat said the case as it stood wasn't strong enough to secure a conviction and had been returned to police for the second time. In October, his office sent back the file after raising questions about the pollution test results.

"We don't plan to file an indictment now because, again, there are some questions that the police haven't answered," Ilat said. He declined to give more details.

Police weren't immediately available for comment.

Under Indonesian law, police prepare a case against a suspect before handing it over to prosecutors. Prosecutors then either formally charge the suspect or return the dossier to police, who must present them with a stronger case or drop the case.

There have been conflicting test results about water quality in the bay. The World Health Organization found the water unpolluted. But the Environment Ministry study found that arsenic in the soil and mercury levels in the seabed organisms were far higher than in other parts of the bay.

Newmont has insisted it did nothing wrong.

Environmentalists, who have long accused multinational mining companies of pollution in Indonesia, have said the company should be prosecuted. Some Cabinet ministers have also accused the company of wrongdoing.

Newmont stopped mining two years ago at the Sulawesi site, 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) northeast of the capital, Jakarta, after extracting all the gold it could. But it kept processing ore there until Aug. 31, when the mine was permanently shut. (*)