CANBERRA, Australia: Rio Tinto chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques will lose around $3.5 million in bonuses due to the destruction of Australian indigenous sacred sites to access iron ore, the mining company said on Monday.
The Anglo-Australia mining giant announced that three executives would lose bonuses following the destruction in May of two 46,000-year-old rock shelters in Juukan George in Western Australia state.
Chris Salisbury and Simone Niven will each lose around $700,000 in bonuses. The full details of their financial penalties will be revealed in the companys remuneration report next year.
The company has apologized to the rock shelters traditional owners, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people.
The destruction of the rock shelters should not have happened and we are absolutely committed to listening, learning and changing, Rio Tinto said in a statement.
Rio Tinto concluded in an internal review that there was no single root cause or error that directly resulted in the destruction of the rock shelters.
The board review concluded that while Rio Tinto had obtained legal authority to impact the Juukan rock shelters, it fell short of the standards and internal guidance that Rio Tinto sets for itself over and above its legal obligations, a company statement said.
Australian Center for Corporate Responsibility strategy leader James Fitzgerald described the internal report as an insult to traditional owners. Fitzgerald argues that Jacques should be fired.
Theres no findings in relation to them and yet theyre being fined millions of dollars, Fitzgerald said of the three punished executives.
It says to me that this is just a bit of an empty gesture in order to deflect the anger of shareholders and others, Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald hoped a parliamentary committee thats examining the demolition of the shelters would provide meaningful answers.
The committees chairman Warren Entsch said earlier this month that Rio Tintos actions in destroying the cultural site beggar belief.
It seems to me that in spite of everything that happened, this was totally avoidable, Entsch said during a hearing.
There were a number of warning bells and Im very interested to find out why those warning bells werent investigated further. It just beggars belief, he added.
The Western Australian government has promised to update indigenous heritage laws that allowed Rio Tinto to legally destroy the sacred sites.
I think theres a lot of soul searching going on among some of the mining companies and the Juukan Gorge issue has obviously caused a lot of consideration of their internal practices, and thats a good thing, Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan said. They should always be doing that. But well make sure we bring forward new Aboriginal heritage legislation.
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor
Comments
0 comment