"After a four-year legal battle, a mining company has paid the government a record $1.79 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution across 19 states, federal agencies announced Thursday. ... The money, received Wednesday night from a subsidiary of the mining conglomerate Grupo Mexico, Asarco's parent, will be used to repair extensive damage from the mining operations. ... The deal required the coopoeration of the Justice, Interior and Agriculture Departments as well as the Environmental Protection Agency. At the new conference, officials were jubilant about the outcome. ... Jack Kinzie, a lawyer at the firm Baker Botts who was the lead lawyer for Asarco in the bankruptcy case, called the settlement 'fair.' But in a statement in June, the firm said it had been able to limit the allowed claims against the copper giant to substantially less than the $3.6 billion originally filed", my emphasis, Leslie Kaufman at the NYT, 11 December 2009, link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/science/earth/11settle.html.
This is appalling. Another DOJ sellout of the public interest. Why were these officals jubilant? Because of the $1.79 billion they collected, or the $1.81 billion they didn't? $1.81 billion will buy a lot of NY BigLaw partnerships.
5 comments:
The corporatist stranglehold on our government continues...
The DOJ is happy because they answer to the polluting maggots. Happy New Year!
Edgar:
Happy New Year. Or as happy as it can be under the circumstances.
IA
Why is there a Swiss Bank called ASARCO A.G. (associated with Asarco SA and Asarcon Inc?), whose President was caught with gambling debt(s) from international gambling (also reported to have gambled in Las Vegas and Atlantic City) and was forced to sell one of two side-by-side Chicago lakefront estates to cover the debt; and whose attorney represents the Royal Family of Vietnam? And why hasn't the Federal DOJ done ANYTHING to require the courts to consider the liabilities from illegal toxic wastes burned by Asarco for years (according to the EPA/DOJ)?
What makes Anonymous thnink the 2 ASARCO's he mentions are connected to the Grupo Mexico entity? Just a guess or is there some nexus?
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