THE TRIAL of four employees of the giant mining company Rio Tinto for bribery and stealing state secrets ended in Shanghai yesterday, but no verdict or sentences were announced.

Defence lawyers said a verdict and sentencing in the trial of Australian national Stern Hu, head of Rio’s China iron ore business, his subordinates Liu Caikui and Ge Minqiang, and iron ore salesman Wang Yong, could come within days. People on trial are very rarely found innocent in China so the focus will be on what sentences the court chooses to impose.

The Rio Tinto case is seen as the communist-ruled government showing that it is subjecting foreign companies to increasingly close scrutiny, and that they have to follow the rules of engagement in China. For example, the secrecy rules that Mr Hu and his colleagues are being charged under are not public knowledge – they are secret.

Meanwhile, Chinese authorities have accused Google of links to US intelligence as the outpouring of anger in China over the web giant’s decision to abandon its search engine there continues. “Its co-operation and co-ordination with the US intelligence agencies is well known,” ran an editorial in the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.