Stern Hu, the former head of Rio Tinto’s China iron ore business, has been released from a Shanghai prison, China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday, after serving eight years in jail following a 2010 conviction for corruption and stealing commercial secrets.
Hu, an Australian citizen, was originally sentenced to 10 years in jail as tension flared between China, the world’s top user of iron ore, and its biggest supplier, Australia. Fired by Rio in the aftermath, Hu is expected to return to Australia just as relations between the two countries cool to a fresh chill.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, told a daily news briefing in Beijing that Hu had been released on Wednesday. Lu said that Hu had had his sentence reduced in accordance with the law, without saying…
