Former General Manager of MCC Fired from the Party

Shen Heting of MCC meets Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the Presidential Palace in Kabul on October 18, 2012. Photo: Handout

Shen Heting, the former general manager of the China Metallurgical Group Corp (MCC), a state-owned Chinese company, is expelled from the Community Party for corruption, South China Morning Post reports. 

Shen held the position of party general secretary of MCC when the Mes Aynak deal was sealed in 2007. At the time, the 3-billion-dollar deal was the biggest foreign investment for the Chinese government. Details of his corruption is not revealed, but the expel means political death sentence for the state-owned company manager.

It's been a decade since the mining deal of Mes Aynak, yet the demolition process has yet to begin, due to security problems of Afghanistan and the ever-delaying negotiation process to revisit contract terms of the mining deal. Local residents, archaeologists and environmentalists worldwide, as the supporters of Mes Aynak know, contributed significantly to delaying the mining and allowing time to unearth invaluable artifacts from Mes Aynak to be documented and preserved at the National Museum of Kabul. 

We will have to watch further to see if this new development will affect Mes Aynak in any way. Thank you so much for your continued support of Mes Aynak.