Rio's Hu owned $17m villas, say media reports

THE media in Hong Kong yesterday accused Rio Tinto's Stern Hu of accumulating a personal fortune from bribes from Chinese steel mills, stepping up a Chinese-language media campaign against Rio Tinto and in favour of tighter information controls.

Wen Wei Po, a prominent Hong Kong newspaper sympathetic to Beijing, cited an investigation ''insider'' to claim Mr Hu improperly acquired personal assets including ''more than a couple'' of villas each worth more than 100 million yuan ($17 million).

As well as allegedly bribing managers at large steel mills for commercial information, the report claimed Mr Hu accepted bribes from small steel mills in return for giving them larger import quotas from Rio Tinto.

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Rio Tinto's iron ore chief, Sam Walsh, last month said allegations ''that employees were involved in bribery of officials at Chinese steel mills are wholly without foundation''.

Chinese officials said last month they had ''proof'' to back allegations that Rio Tinto, Mr Hu and three Chinese employees had engaged in stealing state secrets and bribery on a huge scale. That evidence has not been released, while previous Chinese-language reports about Rio's dealings have been called into question. ''Much of the recent news is not accurate,'' a senior Chinese steel official said yesterday.

Yesterday authorities appeared to back away from extraordinary allegations at the weekend that Rio Tinto's ''espionage'' activities had stripped more than $US100 billion ($119 billion) from China over six years.

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