China finally indicts Rio Tinto employees for bribery

After their arrest in July 2009, today China finally indicted Anglo Australian mining company Rio Tinto's four Shanghai-based employees on charges of accepting bribes and stealing trade secrets.

On 7 July, China had arrested four Rio Tinto employees working at the miner's Shanghai sales and marketing office.

The arrested included Stern Hu, an Australian passport holder and the miner's marketing manager, who was also the chief negotiator in the long-term benchmark iron ore annual contract negotiations and three other Chinese citizen employees (See: China arrests four Rio Tinto employees)

China had said at the time that they had been arrested on charges of espionage and stealing state secrets, but later dropped the more severe charge of espionage and substituted it with bribery and stealing state secrets.

The state-run Xinhua news agency, citing a Chinese court statement, today reported that the four Rio Tinto employees were indicted by prosecutors for asking and accepting huge bribes from several Chinese steel mills on multiple occasions and for having used improper methods to obtain commercial secrets from them on several occasions.

Although the Xinhua report did not say when the trial is likely to take place, analysts feel that once China hands down indictments, it is highly likely that the four will automatically be found guilty.