Newmont welcomes audit report release

PT Newmont Minahasa Raya welcomes the request of several non-governmental organization (NGOs) to release the environment audit report of the government-led audit team on its operation.

"This report follows original flawed testing, the results of which haven't been released," said Richard Ness, President Director of Newmont Minahasa Raya said in a statement. "The first, draft report was so flawed it appeared that some of the samples were improperly stored and analyzed, or possibly intentionally tampered with," he said.

He said the results weren't released because they were unreliable, not because they were secret. "I'm also a little surprised Walhi would accuse the North Sulawesi office of the environment of keeping valid test results secret, as they did this week (last week)," he added.

But the important thing here is that we welcome participation of NGOs and academics in this process. In fact, we invite our colleagues in the NGO movement to sit down with the environment ministry, academics and ourselves to review the independent team's findings," he said. (*)