Tag Archives: cards

China vs. Rio Tinto Execs: Why Confrontation Isn’t Over

When the Chinese government announced earlier this week the formal arrest of four Shanghai-based executives of global mining giant Rio Tinto — one Australian citizen and three Chinese nationals — it seemed a deliberate ratcheting down of a case that had stunned foreign investors in the country. After all, Beijing had effectively dropped the case’s most ominous element: the charge that Rio’s Stern Hu and his three colleagues had allegedly stolen “state secrets,” in part by bribing executives of Chinese steel companies, who are Rio’s largest buyers of iron ore. Under a state-secrets charge, the four men faced the prospect of a secret trial and the possibility of lifetime sentences

Powerful ex-President Rafsanjani remains quiet in election fallout

He’s a key Iranian politician whose name is on the lips of opponents, supporters and experts alike in the bloody aftermath of the Iran’s presidential elections. But despite the chaos that’s plagued the Islamic Republic for the past two weeks — even resulting in the brief detention of his daughter — former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has remained silent and largely unseen. The last time the world saw Iran’s assembled leadership was June 19, when Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed the victory of hard-line incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the hotly contested June 12 election at Friday prayers.