Billionaire Beny Steinmetz, the founder and owner of a company embroiled in a long-drawn-out dispute with Vale (NYSE: VALE) over lost rights to the Simandou iron ore project in Guinea, has lost his latest battle against the Brazilian miner.
The Rio de Janeiro-based miner said on Monday that local prosecutors had closed an investigation into CEO Eduardo Bartolomeo, and other executives and former directors over alleged illegal practices related to the deal to explore the deposit.
At two billion tonnes of iron ore with some of the highest grades in the industry, Simandou is one of the world’s biggest and richest reserves of the steelmaking material.
Prosecutors had launched a probe in March based on documents supplied by Steinmetz, but concluded the billionaire’s accusations were “disturbingly unspecific.”
They also said the documents presented did not “contain elements that even in theory indicate the occurrence of a crime of active corruption or international influence peddling.”
For the rest of this article: https://www.mining.com/steinmetz-loses-latest-battle-against-vale-over-simandou/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter