Rio Tinto’s Madagascar Mine Promised Prosperity. It Tainted a Community.

Bloated and distorted carcasses shimmered on the surface of Lake Ambavarano in southeastern Madagascar. Forty-year-old fisherman Olivier Randimbisoa lost count as they floated by.

“I know what it’s like to see a dead fish that’s been speared,” he said. “I’d never seen anything like this.”

A series of cyclones and storms had battered the region in early 2022, and in the days afterward, the air was still and calm. As Randimbisoa paddled around in his dugout canoe, he recognized the different species and called them by their local names: fiambazaha, saroa, vily, and malemiloha. Overnight, the fish he made his living from, the fish his wife and children ate, the fish that supported the entire lakeside community, were nearly gone.

“It was scary, because we have been eating fish from this lake for so long. We have fed our families, and now it’s polluted,” said Randimbisoa. “We have told our families not to go to the lake.”

Randimbisoa has a theory about what killed the fish. “It’s dirty water from the factory of QMM,” he said.

Lake Ambavarano, where Randimbisoa works, is connected to two other lakes — Besaroy and Lanirano — through a series of narrow waterways. The lakes are adjacent to QIT Madagascar Minerals, or QMM: a mine in Madagascar that’s 80 percent owned by the Anglo-Australian mining and metals behemoth Rio Tinto, and 20 percent by the government of Madagascar. The mine extracts ilmenite, a major source of titanium dioxide, which is mainly used as a white pigment in products like paints, plastics, and paper. QMM also produces monazite, a mineral that contains highly sought-after rare-earth elements used to produce the magnets in electric vehicles and wind turbines.

After the fish deaths, the government of Madagascar’s environmental regulator and Rio Tinto conducted water sampling work. Citing such testing, Rio Tinto says there is no proof that its mining killed the fish. Water sample analysis revealed “no conclusive link between our mine activities and the observed dead fish by community members,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email to The Intercept. Those results have not been made available to the public, despite requests by civil society groups and The Intercept.

Now, more than 15 years after QMM became operational, Rio Tinto is facing a likely lawsuit in an English court brought by U.K.-based law firm Leigh Day on behalf of residents of villages near the QMM mine. In a letter of claim, a document that is an early step in a lawsuit in the U.K., the villagers accuse Rio Tinto of contaminating the waterways and lakes that they use for domestic purposes with elevated and harmful levels of uranium and lead, which pose a serious risk to human health. Leigh Day commissioned blood lead level testing in the area around the mine as part of its research into the claim. According to the letter of claim, which was sent on Tuesday, the testing shows that 58 people living around the mine have elevated levels of lead, and that the majority of cases exceed the threshold at which the World Health Organization recommends clinical and environmental interventions, 5 micrograms per deciliter. The claim alleges that the most likely cause of the elevated levels is a result of QMM’s mine processes.

“Whilst Rio Tinto extracts large profits from its mining operations in Madagascar, our clients’ case is that they and other local families are being forced to consume water which is contaminated with harmful heavy metals. In bringing this case, our clients are seeking accountability and justice for the damage that has been caused to their local environment and their health,” Paul Dowling, Leigh Day’s lead partner on the case, told The Intercept.

Leigh Day’s blood lead level testing results are a significant development that may for the first time quantify the detrimental health impacts their clients allege are posed by QMM. Surface water pollution and lead poisoning are both global problems, and the case will be watched closely not just by Rio Tinto shareholders, but by global environmental justice advocates in other nations where villagers also accuse industrial giants of polluting their waterways.

“We have received the letter from Leigh Day,” said the Rio Tinto spokesperson, who declined further comment on the allegations. The spokesperson pointed to a published report that states that the company’s recent water analysis had not detected metals, including uranium and lead, that had previously been identified as potential concerns.

Madagascar’s environmental regulator, the National Office for the Environment, or ONE, says it has periodically monitored QMM’s activities over the last decade and has tested the water following past complaints about contamination. “In the face of these accusations, ONE requested several expert analyses … the results of which indicated no contamination of surface waters nor mining sites,” Hery Rajaomanana, ONE’s director of environmental integration and sustainable development, told The Intercept in March.

Rio Tinto, which has over 52,000 employees and saw net earnings of $12.4 billion in 2022, has a troubled track record in Madagascar. Local residents, civil society groups, and media outlets have accused the company of damaging the endangered forest, threatening rare endemic species, forcing villagers off their land without proper compensation, destroying fishers’ livelihoods, and failing to honor its promises to employ local people. Communities have been protesting the mine almost since its inception. Last year, skirmishes broke out in June and lasted more than a week as residents blocked road access to the mine. The government called in the police and army to assert control.

“QMM operates in a highly sensitive area from a water and broader environmental perspective,” wrote the Rio Tinto spokesperson who declined to attach a name to the statements from the company. “We are committed to working to address any specific issues that community members raise, and to engaging in constructive dialogue on how we can mitigate impacts of our operations while generating tangible and sustainable benefits for our host communities.”

Key Takeaways

The 150-year-old metals and mining giant has been embroiled in scandal for years. In 2020, Rio Tinto blew up two ancient Aboriginal Australian sites to expand its iron ore mining in the region. In 2022, a review conducted by Australia’s former sex discrimination commissioner found that bullying, sexism, and racism were rampant across the company. In March 2023, Rio Tinto agreed to pay a $15 million penalty to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after accusations surfaced that in 2011 it paid $10.5 million to a friend of the Guinean president to retain iron ore mining rights. Despite this, its Guinea project, the world’s largest and highest-grade new iron ore mine, is scheduled to move ahead this year. The company also plans to build on sacred Indigenous land in Arizona, has been accused of financial impropriety in Mozambique and Mongolia, and is currently facing pressure from investors over water quality concerns at several of its mining sites, including in Madagascar and Mongolia.

In early 2023, two longtime Rio Tinto insiders — Maurice Duffy, a top-level executive coach, and Richard Bowley, a project management mining executive — wrote a series of confidential reports commissioned by the Mongolian government’s anti-corruption regulator. The Intercept obtained two of the draft reports, which outlined allegations about Rio Tinto’s culture of bullying, bribery, and corruption in countries around the world from 2015 until 2023.

The Rio Tinto spokesperson said that the confidential reports have “not been published, and despite requests, we have not had the opportunity to review,” and did not provide an on-the-record response to most of the allegations. The Mongolian regulator did not respond to questions about the draft reports.

According to one of the draft reports, Duffy, a consultant, said he stopped working with Rio Tinto in 2018 because of concerns about the company’s conduct. He said that after his departure, Rio Tinto instructed him to destroy thousands of records documenting ethical issues, among them proof of irregular payments made in Madagascar.

“I reported irregular payments to Rio Tinto. The allegations of irregular payments in Madagascar are based upon information given to me by Rio Tinto employees,” Duffy told The Intercept. “I can only confirm that they were stated as inappropriate and irregular.”

According to the draft report, the company stated in writing to Duffy that it had “regulatory approval” for the destruction to occur, but despite many requests, Duffy has been unable to get details on which regulators gave permission to destroy the documents. Duffy sent photographs of documents being shredded and incinerated to Rio Tinto, as they had requested, the draft report states.

Rio Tinto’s spokesperson wrote, “We take our disclosure obligations extremely seriously and strongly refute any suggestion that this is not the case.”

One of the confidential draft reports offered an unnamed company executive’s perspective on legal challenges: “Our legal strategy is straightforward. FUCK them. Frustrate; Undermine; Cost; Kick into long grass.”

That report also outlined a key part of Rio Tinto’s strategy: using the chaotic nature of election campaigns to the company’s advantage. “Rio key strategy is based on the premise that Politicians always go short term,” the draft report reads. “It’s the nature of the beast, elections years are a good time to strike, and they can rely on their friends to filter the facts and articulate a different narrative.”

2023 was an election year in Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest countries, which rates 145 out of 180 on the global Corruption Perceptions Index. Incumbent President Andry Rajoelina faced a crowded field of opposition candidates, and he won in an election marred by accusations of fraud, low voter turnout, and violence.

Last August, Rajoelina’s top aide was arrested in London, accused of soliciting a bribe from the British mining company Gemfields to secure licenses to operate in Madagascar. Rajoelina fired the aide, who was convicted in a London court in February. Amid that chaos, Rio Tinto was renegotiating its 1998 fiscal agreement with the government. The parties finalized new terms in August 2023. As part of the agreement, Rio Tinto committed money to infrastructure and local community projects. The company hopes to expand into Petriky and Sainte Luce, two additional sites located along Madagascar’s eastern coastline.

Paradise Lost

QMM started exploring for heavy mineral sands around Anôsy, Madagascar, along the southeastern coast in 1986. The region is home to about 800,000 people, with more than 90 percent of rural residents living on less than $1.90 per day.

The area where the minerals were discovered is a unique ecosystem, a littoral forest occurring in the sandy substrates close to the Indian Ocean. Madagascar once had a continuous 1,600-kilometer band of littoral forest along its eastern coastline. Today, it’s estimated that only........

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