Things are crook at Rio. 

Jean Jacques indicates how much a ten million fine will hurt the Rio bottom line.

Last year they made a profit of 12 billion. 

That’s pretty shit really. No wonder the shareholders have gone crook.  You may think that’s a lot of money, but in actual fact it’s what a Russian kleptocrat spends on his dog shows just in a year.

Rios corporate affairs boss also got the boot. A mistake anyone could’ve made.

Whichever way you look at it, we should be sympathetic to Rio. The executives all live in London. That would be hard lines. They have to queue up with mates of Angus Taylor, (perhaps Angus himself) who have tax havens in the Caribbean and the Channel Islands. They only do this so that they may direct their funds without Government interference. Who’d only spend it on social housing, welfare and the environment. Sorry, that would be a progressive liberal government. Or in Australia’s case, spend it on mining, rich mates and repealing environment laws. Good on em. Even the Russian kleptocrats, the Saudi royalty, successful middlemen, perhaps Andrew Barkla, all feel pretty sorry for those poor execs at Rio. 

They have to front meetings, sometimes talk to shareholders, and occasionally, carry the can when somebody blows up a sacred site, an ancient rock carving or some other so-called sacred object that’s not even listed on “Stays” or “Air bnb”. 

Whoops, Wrong Rio.

So spare a thought for the CEO. He’s had to resign.  Although he lives in London, (favoured domicile for those keen on stashing unorthodox funds)   he did buy a nice Harbour-side pad in Sydney. Now he’ll have to sell up, and the market is depressed. Think of that. Through no fault of his own he has to go back to pommy-land, tail between his legs, and suffer, just cos some overzealous geologist likes to get slap-happy with the gelly. 

I mean, we ask yer. 

Unable to see the funny side

But things are worse. 

This year Rio barely struggled past the ten billion barrier.  Seriously folks.  If you’re a Rio exec, that would mean you’d be sneered at by any right-minded kleptocrat or oil thug. A mere ten billion doesn’t even get you an audience with Prince Andrew, and Fergie wouldnt even be interested in stumping up the connections and  opening the doors. You’d never get an audience with the Queen and your chances of being knighted or getting an OBE for digging shit up of the ground would be zero. 

At least Rio aint banned Guy Fawkes Night.

But worse is yet to come. This year with a bare 10.2 billion profit, the Western Australian Government after agitation all over the place from lefty do-gooders is gonna slap a ten million dollar fine if Rio or any like minded individual does the same again. 

That’s ten million bucks!! 

Jean bought his weekender for three million

For poor ol Jean Sebastian Jacques that’ll mean he’ll have to accept that the swimming pool and the jetty will be used to pay for further fines. For Gina, it’d mean having to write down some assets, like the ride on lawnmower or the coffee machine.  She might have to flog a bit of costume jewellery, or even cut the funding she gives to the IPA. Right across the board people like Rio, who pay taxes, and provide growth and opportunity for decent working Australians are under threat. Good thing that the Pyramids, the Coliseum or Parthenon aint got bauxite or iron ore underneath em, otherwise that’d be a round thirty million just before you’d even pressed the detonator. 

And to be perfectly honest, like Boris, Jean knows a bit about Latin. He’s fucken well educated. Well, he’d have to be. He’s got a funny double-barrelled name.  These European icons represent CIVILISATION, and we at pcbycp have it on good authority from none other than Lord Kenneth Clark, that “Civilisation”, his mighty tome made no mention of obscure rock scrawls in an obscure cleft out in the middle of bloody nowhere in the Pilbara. 

So for chrissakes, what have we learnt from this debacle?

For Rio Tinto the lesson is simple. 

Don’t allow archeologists near heritage sites.  Keep the archaeologists and lefty ratbags away, and then blow away. 

Jean was planing to improve the weekender and make it a look a little more like this.

Rio’s problem, was that remote Australia just aint remote enough any more. 

Postscript

Still poor ol Jean gets to walk away with only between 17 to 25 million, which is the real tragedy. Try and service a yacht and Learjet on that paltry sum. They’s why they get paid the big bucks, because of the risks they take to make Australia a better place.