Gold Fields confirms that in December 2012, the company, through the Social and Ethics committee of its board of directors, commenced a thorough independent investigation concerning its Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) transactions. The company took this action following press reports raising questions about those transactions.
The board has engaged an independent, highly regarded international law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP (Paul Weiss), with extensive experience in such matters, to undertake the investigation. The board has directed Paul Weiss to determine the facts, and to provide recommendations to the Board.
Gold Fields has also asked Paul Weiss to review the Company's relevant internal controls and to recommend any necessary improvements. Gold Fields will report further on this matter upon the conclusion of the investigation, which is being conducted with the full support of the board and senior management.
Gold Fields values and respects the services to the company of its former chair, Dr Mamphela Ramphele. During her tenure Dr Ramphele strongly supported the board's decision to commission an independent investigation. Statements attributed in press reports recently to Dr Ramphele represent her own personal views.
Gold Fields denied claims by Dr Ramphele, who served as its chair until last month, that the Department of Mineral Resources forced it to include certain individuals as beneficiaries of its South Deep empowerment deal in 2010 — and threatened to refuse it a mining licence if it did not toe the line.
“The South African government had shoved the list of some of Invictus Gold’s black economic empowerment shareholders down Gold Fields’ throat, with an ultimatum that if the preferred names were not taken on board it would be denied a mining licence,” Ramphele told BDLive.
Ramphele is now the head of Agang SA, an organisation she has described as “a political platform” and which is widely expected to become a political party that will contest next year’s national elections in South Africa.
