Rio Tinto pays $15m to settle Guinea bribery case

Rio Tinto has agreed to pay a $15m penalty over bribery charges brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, involving payments to a consultant in Guinea to keep mining rights over a project in the country.

The investigation found in July 2011 the company had hired a French investment banker, a close friend of a former senior Guinean government official, as a consultant to help Rio Tinto retain its mining rights in the Guinea’s Simandou region.

Rio said it would pay the charges without admitting to or denying the regulator’s findings that it violated internal accounting control provisions.

Another investigation into the same incident by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office was launched in July 2017, and is still under way. Australia’s Federal Police force is also probing the incident.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com