Colombia accuses Drummond executives of funding paramilitary group
Jun 1, 2023 at 3:04 am GMT
By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA, May 31 (Reuters) -The current Colombia head of coal miner Drummond Co Inc DRMND.UL and his predecessor will be tried for allegedly funding right-wing paramilitaries, the country's attorney general's office said on Wednesday, as the U.S.-based company denied any wrongdoing by the executives.
There is "abundant proof" current head Jose Miguel Linares, who took up his post in 2013 after serving as vice-president of legal, and Augusto Jimenez, who headed the company's Colombia operations between 1990 and 2012, conspired to finance a paramilitary group, the prosecutor said in a statement.
"Linares Martinez and Jimenez Mejia, between 1996 and 2001, increased the value of a food provision contract with a provider company to obtain additional resources and use them to cover previously-agreed illegal obligations with...the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)," the statement said.
The effort was a bid to protect assets and ensure the free operation of Drummond's mine in Cesar province, the statement added.
Drummond rejected the accusations, saying in its own statement that they are the product of "a cartel of false witnesses."
. . .
The case is a "moral triumph," said Joris van de Sandt of Dutch non-governmental organization PAX, which has campaigned to raise awareness over alleged wrongdoings by Drummond, which the company has always denied.
More:
https://www.xm.com/research/markets/allNews/reuters/colombia-accuses-drummond-executives-of-funding-paramilitary-group-53555539
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Older article:
Murder of union leaders in Colombia among problems facing Alabama coal tycoon Drummond
Tico Times
By
Tico Times
July 18, 2013
BOGOTÁ, Colombia – Gustavo Soler knew he was in trouble. In 2001, Soler was union president at a Colombian coal mine owned by Drummond Co., controlled by the wealthiest family in the U.S. state of Alabama.
Soler’s predecessor, and his deputy, had been killed seven months earlier. Now Soler was getting threats, Nubia Soler said. He told his family to pack, that they would leave as soon as he got home from the union office in Valledupar, a city in Colombia’s coal belt.
He never made it. Armed men stopped his bus, asked for him by name and abducted him. He was found under a pile of banana leaves with two bullet holes in his head, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports.
Afterward, Nubia Soler said, Drummond Chief Executive Officer Garry Neil Drummond sent a taxi to bring her to company offices near the coastal town of Santa Marta. He promised to put her children, then 14 and 9, through school.
. . .
And labor lawyer Terry Collingsworth has filed four civil suits against Drummond Co., two demanding compensation for the families of union leaders killed in Colombia while representing workers at its mines.
In 2007, Drummond won one case brought by Collingsworth after a U.S. District Court jury in Birmingham, Ala., concluded the company didn’t aid or abet the killers. Another suit was dismissed in 2012.
In the current case, filed in 2009, Collingsworth charges that Drummond Co. paid right-wing paramilitaries to terrorize the population along the 120-mile rail line from Drummond’s two mines to its port on the Caribbean, torturing and killing innocent people to keep them from giving haven to the FARC. Collingsworth sued Garry Neil personally for the same allegations in February.
More:
https://ticotimes.net/2013/07/18/murder-of-union-leaders-in-colombia-among-problems-facing-alabama-coal-tycoon-drummond
