Murray Quoted on Conflict Minerals Reporting Process

Senior Counsel Frank Murray Jr. was quoted in a Bloomberg Law article, “Commerce Department Admits Challenge in Identifying Smelters Funding DRC Conflict,” on September 16, 2014. The article discussed the U.S. Commerce Department’s inability to determine whether or not conflict minerals processing facilities were helping to fund the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Murray was quoted saying, “One issue that reporting companies experienced in their initial conflict minerals reports this past year was difficulty in determining whether the entities identified by suppliers as ‘smelters’ or ‘refiners’ were, in fact, smelters or refiners. That led to some criticism of companies who disclosed in their reports the names of every entity identified as ‘smelters’ or refiner’ – namely, that the information disclosed had not been vetted and contained errors or questionable information, thereby undermining the reliability of the entire conflict minerals report.”