La Oroya Refinery In Peru Idle, In Bankruptcy Thx. To Creditor - Poor Billionaire Ira Rennert!

[hatrack]

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

n 2004, a public health expert in Missouri named Fernando Serrano got a call from an archbishop in Peru. High up in the Andes, a metals refinery was spewing pollution that coated the factory town of La Oroya. The archbishop wanted Mr. Serrano to assess the damage.

Mr. Serrano, a professor at Jesuit institution Saint Louis University, flew to the Peruvian capital of Lima and took the long, winding road five hours east and 12,000 feet up to the town whose soil had turned too acidic for plants to grow. He tested La Oroya's ground, air and water, and took blood samples from some of its 35,000 residents. The results took his breath away: The town was not only laden with arsenic, antimony and cadmium, but an estimated 97% of the children between ages six and 12 had elevated levels of lead in their blood—levels four times higher than amounts considered dangerous in the U.S. “The numbers were off-the-charts high,” Mr. Serrano recalled. “The town had a big problem.”

Today, the mess in La Oroya is causing big trouble for the refinery's New York-based owner, Ira Rennert, an industrialist who has amassed a $5.9 billion fortune from owning some of the world's dirtiest businesses.

Mr. Rennert has scrapped with environmental regulators and activists for decades and always emerged largely unscathed. But his problems in faraway Peru are beginning to cut close: His La Oroya refinery, which generated some 50% of his business empire's earnings last decade, now lies dormant. An angry customer has pushed it into an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding in Peru and persuaded a local prosecutor to open a criminal investigation. Mr. Rennert's foes in South America are also taking their fight to the U.S., with federal judges in New York and St. Louis recently allowing them to gather evidence here. “Ira Rennert's problems are coming home to him,” said Michael Hugo, a Boston lawyer who represents a group of children in La Oroya. “He won't be able to hide from this mess.”

EDIT

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20111127/FINANCE/311279990

[Nihil]

1. Wanna bet?

> “Ira Rennert's problems are coming home to him,” said Michael Hugo, a Boston
> lawyer who represents a group of children in La Oroya. “He won't be able to hide
> from this mess.”

Warren Anderson has managed to do exactly that - with the assistance of the
US government - for the best part of three decades so I wouldn't expect anything
in the way of justice to apply to yet another filthy rich American crook.

:grr: