The RCMP obtained the search warrant after saying it had reasonable grounds to believe that Ivanhoe violated Canada’s Criminal Code and Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act between 2014 and 2018, Ivanhoe said in a disclosure in an annual information form.
Some of the documents authorized for seizure were related to three bank transfers from Ivanhoe to the Swiss bank account of a company called Stucky Technologies from 2015 to 2018, A Swiss engineering firm, to work with Congo’s state electricity company on hydropower supplies for Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula copper project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), The Globe and Mail reported.
The Vancouver-based miner has been working on Kamoa-Kakula for more than ten years. In 2015, China’s Zijin Mining Group got on board, becoming Ivanhoe’s partner in the project, with each company holding a 40% stake and the Congolese government owning 20%.
Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN) posted a profit of $85.4 million for the three months to September 30, the first full quarter commercial production at its Kamoa-Kakula joint venture in Congo, the biggest copper mine to come online in decades. Mining billionaire and Ivanhoe founder Robert Friedland has said he believes the project will become the world’s second-largest copper mine and the one with the highest grades among major operations.
The company is currently composing a formal response to these claims.
(More to come)
