The stunning allegation, published on the front page of China Daily, the country’s official English language newspaper, ratcheted up the stakes in a case that has already rocked the country’s steel industry and threatened to strain relations between China and Australia.
In its report, China Daily, which regularly delivers government messages, said Rio Tinto bribed 16 large Chinese steel companies, all members of the China Steel & Iron Association, to gain access to industry data. The paper attributed the allegation to an unidentified “industry insider” and did not identify the 16 companies.
The report comes more than a week after Chinese authorities detained four Rio Tinto employees, including one Australian national, on suspicions of espionage, stealing state secrets and harming the nation’s economic interests and security.
A Chinese government-controlled Web site said last week that Rio employees had bribed Chinese steel executives to gain access to confidential government documents that could have given Rio Tinto an edge in its annual iron ore negotiations with China’s state-owned steel mills.
But Wednesday’s report is the first time a government publication has alleged that many of the country’s biggest steel companies may have been involved in the scandal.
Rio Tinto has expressed shock at the allegations and said that the company has strict ethics policies that forbid bribery. On Wednesday, a spokesman for the company declined comment.
Also on Wednesday, several large Chinese steel companies, including BaoSteel, strongly denied they were under investigation in the Rio Tinto case.
“BaoSteel has no executive cooperating with the government investigation or being investigated,” said Meng Haibiao, a company spokesman.
Several other steel companies, including Jinan Steel, called the China Daily’s report “fake news,” insisting none of the company’s executives was under investigation.
But at Laiwu Steel in north China’s Shandong Province, a spokesman who gave his name only as Mr. Liu said one of the company’s shipping executives was cooperating with the Rio investigation.
Also, an executive at Shougang Steel, one of China’s biggest steel producers, was detained last week as part of the Rio investigation.
In the past week, China has questioned or detained at least 10 steel executives, including shipping agents, traders and members of the steel association, according to the state-run news media and interviews with industry officials.
In Australia, several government officials have criticized the detention of the four Rio employees and suggested that Beijing is retaliating against Rio Tinto for scuttling a deal last month that would have given a Chinese state-owned company a large stake in the mining giant.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia, who has kept a relatively low profile since the detentions, signaled on Wednesday his concern about the state secrets law case against Rio employees.
According to Reuters, Mr. Rudd told reporters, “A range of foreign governments and corporations will be watching this case with interest and will be watching it very closely, and they will be drawing their own conclusions as to how it is conducted.”
A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Wednesday.
Although Beijing says the Rio Tinto case involves state secrets, that has not stopped state-run newspapers from printing details about it during the past week. Many articles have described rampant corruption in the trading of iron ore.
More than a dozen industry officials, steel analysts and traders interviewed this week also said China’s iron ore trade was plagued with corruption.
Experts blame China’s two-tiered system for purchasing iron ore for fostering corruption. While big steel mills are allowed to negotiate long-term, fixed-price contracts, most small and medium-sized steel mills are expected to buy from the more volatile open market — or what is called the spot market.
The system, analysts say, has created huge arbitrage opportunities, allowing big steel mills with fixed contracts to buy far more supplies than they need and then sell excess supplies to smaller mills on the black market.
“There’s a huge underground arbitrage market in China,” said Ren Qiang, general manager at Zibo Anti Import and Export Company, which deals in the iron ore trade.
Small mills have long complained about being at a huge disadvantage.
The practice violates industry regulations, as well as the fixed contract agreements signed with Rio Tinto and other mining companies, analysts say.
The government has repeatedly warned about this kind of speculative trading, most recently in a regulation released in February.
But industry experts say regulators rarely enforce the rules. They say black market trading was particularly strong in 2007 and early 2008, when iron ore prices skyrocketed.
Analysts say the two-tier system may have also created friction between big mining companies, like Rio Tinto, and the government controlled China’s Steel & Iron Association, which represents the biggest mills in annual fixed contract negotiations.
Analysts say a lower contract price would benefit association members if they choose to secretly sell in the black market.
Tensions boiled over in 2008, when the association urged Chinese mills and traders to boycott Rio Tinto’s spot market iron ore because of dissatisfaction with the negotiations. Rio, in turn criticized the association for using aggressive tactics.
The two side failed to reach an agreement last month on prices for this year’s contracts. One of the lead negotiators for Rio Tinto was Stern Hu, an Australian national who was detained on July 5 for what Beijing says was stealing state secrets and harming China’s economic interests.
Chen Yang contributed research.
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