Transparency

Our transparency statement

As a founding member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and signatory to the B Team Responsible Tax Principles, we believe that greater transparency and accountability is key to building trust and encouraging sustainable business practices. We will disclose contracts with governments in relation to minerals development, where they are not subject to a confidentiality undertaking. We encourage governments to allow such disclosure. 

We commit to disclosing taxes paid and payments to governments. We also support beneficial ownership disclosure and will strive to provide information of the beneficial owners of those entities that we have joint ventures with, in line with the EITI Standard and expectations.

We actively engage with governments and other stakeholders to share our experiences on disclosure and transparency, and encourage the harmonisation of reporting obligations aligned with global best practice.

Contract disclosure

We are also recognised for making our mineral development contracts with governments publicly available, where we are able to do so without breaching confidentiality agreements. We also actively encourage the governments we work with to allow us to disclose these contracts.

By being open about the terms of our contracts with governments, everyone can see what we are contributing to our host communities. And by supporting greater transparency across our industry, we can contribute to the responsible management of natural resources, help prevent corruption and seek to provide our communities with a strong foundation for prosperity.

Beneficial ownership

The EITI defines “beneficial ownership” in respect of a company to mean “the natural person(s) who directly or indirectly ultimately owns or controls the corporate entity” – essentially the “real” owners of a project. Regarding the disclosure of the beneficial owners of publicly listed companies and their wholly owned subsidiaries, the EITI requires disclosure of the name of the stock exchange and a link to the filings where they are listed. This is to facilitate public access to a company’s beneficial ownership information.

The identity of the beneficial or real owners of the companies that have rights to extract or process minerals can be hidden by a chain of difficult to identify and/or unaccountable corporate entities. This can in turn hide problems including corruption and tax evasion.

To promote transparency through the disclosure of beneficial ownership information, we provide information on our substantial beneficial owners in this table.

We are also party to various commercial arrangements across our operations and other activities, including joint ventures. Consistent with the voluntary and additional commitments regarding joint venture party information in our Transparency Statement, we provide information on the names, interests, corporation type and domicile of our joint ventures and other jointly-owned entities, and of our partners, in this table.

To facilitate greater access to our ownership information, stakeholders can also download the above information in machine-readable format.

Political engagement and participation in industry associations

We do not favour any political party, group or individual, or involve ourselves in party political matters. We prohibit the use of funds to support political candidates or parties. Our business integrity procedure includes strict guidelines for dealing with current and former government officials and politicians, and they cannot be appointed to senior employee positions or engaged as consultants, in certain circumstances, without the approval of executive management and our Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer.

We regularly engage with governments and share information and our experiences on issues that affect our operations and our industry. 

We join industry associations where membership provides value to our business, investors and other stakeholders. As part of our Industry association disclosure, we outline the principles that guide our participation and the way we engage, as well as a list of the top five associations by membership fees paid. We also track and disclose how we engage on climate policy issues, disclosing when the policies and advocacy positions adopted by industry associations differ materially from ours.

In the United States, in accordance with the United States Federal Election Campaign Act, we provide administrative support for the Rio Tinto America Political Action Committee (PAC), which was created in 1990 and encourages voluntary employee participation in the political process. All Rio Tinto America PAC employee contributions are reviewed for compliance with federal and state law and are publicly reported in accordance with US election laws.

We do not offer, pay or accept bribes, no matter where we operate, no matter what the situation is, and no matter who is involved. Nor do we allow our agents or intermediaries to do so. We also have strict guidelines on giving and receiving benefits.