A Chilean congressional commission on Wednesday found two mine owners responsible for the accident that trapped 33 men 800m underground for 69 days last year.
The commission’s report, which was expected to be approved by the lower house yesterday, said members unanimously found Alejandro Bohn and Marcelo Kemeny responsible for the collapse that trapped the men deep inside the San Jose mine, whose veins of copper and gold had been pursued for more than 100 years in poorly reinforced tunnels under the Atacama desert in northern Chile.
Chilean Deputy Alejandro Garcia Huidobro said the commission also determined that Chile’s mine safety agency was administratively responsible for failing to fully enforce its safety rules.
LAWSUITS
The report is expected to help lawyers for the miners pursue lawsuits against the owners.
Bohn and Kemeny denied being negligent or otherwise responsible for the collapse, in which a 700,000 tonne granite monolith, the very center of the remote hilltop, crashed down, shutting off any hope of escape without a Herculean rescue effort.
EARLIER ACCIDENT
Both executives also face charges in an earlier accident in which a falling slab of rock sliced off a miner’s leg.
The remarkable rescue effort, involving more than 300 people who supported the drilling and kept the miners safe and well-fed below, was paid for by the Chilean government, which has estimated that the company must repay US$20 million.
The mining company is under bankruptcy protection and its assets have been sold off to help resolve debts and pay severance to the miners.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline posed as a commercial pilot and as a current flight attendant to obtain hundreds of free flights from US airlines, authorities said on Tuesday. Dallas Pokornik, 33, of Toronto, was arrested in Panama after being indicted on wire fraud charges in US federal court in Hawaii in October last year. He pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his extradition to the US. Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, then used fake employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three other
RSS