Newmont in Peru

Describes events associated with Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's intelligence chief and advisor to President Fujimori, his network, and interventions in affairs of the Newmont Mining Corp. Newmont, a U.S. company established in 1921, proclaimed its corporate values to be "behaving with integrity, working loyally, inspiring trust, telling the truth, caring for our colleagues and cooperating with our community." Yet, on February 26, 1998, Lawrence T. Kurlander, a vice president of Newmont, met with Vladimiro Montesinos Torres in Montesinos' office at the Servicio de Intelligencia Nacional (the national intelligence service) to seek his help in getting a resolution favorable to Newmont in a quarrel with the French company Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minieres (BRGM) over their shared ownership of the Yanacocha mine. The mine was the richest gold mine in Latin America and one of the biggest in the world. BRGM wanted to sell part of its 25% share in Yanacocha to Normandy Ltd., an Australian mining company. Newmont sued to block the sale and to gain control of the mine for itself. The dispute had made its way to the Supreme Court of Peru. Montesinos secretly taped his conversation with Kurlander, as was his habit, and the tapes provide a rare inside view of how business gets done where the rule of law is subordinated to political influence.

• International business
• Business and government relations
• Developing countries
• Professional networks
• Business law
• Business history