Supreme Court rulling allows police to probe Newmont
Supreme Court rulling allows police to probe Newmont
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The National Police will push ahead with their pollution investigation against PT Newmont Minahasa Raya after the Supreme Court announced on Thursday that it had found against the United States-based mining firm.
The court said the police investigation of six executives of Newmont on charges of polluting Buyat Bay in South Minahasa regency, North Sulawesi, was legal, clearing the way for the suspects to face trial.
During a pre-trial hearing last December, the South Jakarta District Court dismissed a request for court proceedings against the executives -- two Americans, an Australian and three Indonesians, arguing that the police had failed to notify the environment ministry that they intended to arrest the executives.
Supreme Court spokesman Hasbi Yunda said the country's highest court had overruled the lower court's rule, which appeared set to force the authorities to shelve the case against Newmont.
"The Supreme Court has ruled that the detention of the Newmont executives was legal," he was quoted by AP as saying. "It also ruled that the police can now continue their questioning and investigation of the suspects," he added.
Yunda did not explain the reasons for the ruling. The Supreme Court, which meets behind closed doors, handed down the decision on Monday.
In response, lawyers for Newmont rejected the latest ruling as being "legally flawed", arguing that the ruling handed down by the district court could not be appealed to the Supreme Court.
"Based on Law No. 5 of 2004, the Supreme Court can't accept an appeal against a lower court's decision during a pre-trial hearing," Newmont senior legal advisor Mochammad Kasmali told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Another lawyer Luhut Pangaribuan similarly said earlier on Wednesday it would be "a tragedy" for the country's judicial system if it was true that the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the police.
The court would clearly be violating the law if it accepted the police's appeal, he claimed.
"Supreme Court Chief Justice Bagir Manan was quoted in media reports published on Aug. 7 last year as saying that a decision in a pre-trial hearing could not be appealed. What if he now accepts the police appeal. This would be a display of double standards," Luhut said.
Police said on Thursday they had completed their investigations of the Newmont executives and would now formally hand over the case files to prosecutors, who are expected to charge the men soon.
The suspects are accused of corporate crimes in connection with the alleged polluting of Buyat Bay. If found guilty, they could face up to 15 years in jail.
The government announced last week it was suing Newmont for US$133.6 million in damages for the alleged pollution.
State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar has said that this amount had been calculated based on the environmental damage allegedly caused by the firm.
"The calculation includes the cost of rehabilitating the coastal areas, for example," he said.
The government's determination to press charges against Newmont has cheered green activists, who have long complained that foreign mining operations in Indonesia skirt environmental laws. But it risks spooking investors who complain that Indonesia's legal system and police are inefficient and corrupt. Different tests on the Buyat Bay's waters have produced a plethora of conflicting results.
The World Health Organization and an initial environment ministry report found no evidence that the bay's waters were polluted. But a subsequent ministry study found arsenic levels in the seabed were 100 times higher at the dumping site than in other parts of the bay.
Newmont stopped mining two years ago at the Sulawesi mine after extracting all the gold it could, but kept processing ore there until Aug. 31, 2004, when the mine was permanently closed.