The Mine

by Antti Tuomainen

  The house was so quiet, I heard the almost inaudible hiss from the thermos of coffee as it gradually let out warm air. Mali looked at me.

  ‘I made a mistake,’ he said. ‘And I intend to make up for it.’

  At the beginning of our meeting Matti Mali had seemed like a friendly, relaxed host; now he looked like a man who regretted the course of his life, like an immeasurably fatigued old man.

  ‘Did you record that?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘No.’

  Mali nodded.

  ‘Perhaps that’s for the best.’

  ‘You must be held to account for it though.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  The pleasant warmth of the room had disappeared. I felt the cool floor beneath my feet. The lights in the room – the floor lamp behind me, the two yellow-tinted lamps on the windowsill – were now only strong enough to illuminate contours, to sketch shapes in the dusk. Mali seemed to be sitting further away from me than he had a moment ago. My all-time biggest scoop, the story I’d come here to write, was no longer the story I’d been imagining on the journey to Kaskisaari.

  I leaned towards the table to gather up my papers.

  ‘If it helps you,’ said Mali, nodding towards the papers, ‘I’ll corroborate what you said, what you showed me.’

  I gathered the papers into a neat pile, and was about to stand up when Mali’s gaze glided behind my back. He was startled at what he saw. I turned instinctively. All I could see was the wall clock. I turned back. Still he appeared to be looking at the clock. I waited a moment and stood up. Mali gave a start, then he too rose to his feet.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said.

  We walked into the hallway. I pulled on my outdoor clothes as Mali stood watching me at the edge of the dimly lit space. He moved as soon as I made my way to the door. Once at the door I turned and we shook hands. His voice was hushed as he spoke to me.

  ‘Best of luck with everything. Make sure your mistakes are smaller than mine.’

  Slowly he let go of my hand. I glanced back towards the living room. An exceptionally thick gust of snow passed the window, after which the snow on the window ledge crackled like a packet of sweets scattered on the floor.

  I went down the steps and started walking. I wanted to get away from Kaskisaari.

  10

  He was skiing home. The snowfall made it slow and hard going, but he doggedly made his way forward. It didn’t matter. Each time he pushed down on the poles, each time he raised a ski, he left the past behind. He had done what he’d promised, what he’d agreed. He would never do it again. That was his faith, his confession: I was once a man like that, but I am not that man any longer. It sounded simplistic, but who could really say something like that? He could.

  The snow was white and pristine. Out at sea the wind pressed it into the ground and seemed to tear snow from the sky, ravenous and insatiable. From time to time a gust of snow blinded him and wet his cheeks. It felt cold, cleansing.

  The love that had once separated them now unified them again.

  He skied onwards.

  Homewards. Finally.

  11

  BLOG

  Janne Vuori HT

  janne.vuori@helsinkitoday.fi

  Twitter: @vuorijanneht

  THE MINE THAT BURIED EVERYTHING

  The Suomalahti mine is polluting its local environment in dangerous and ultimately irrevocable ways. All those responsible are dead. Nobody has won – not even the author of this exposé.

  I freely admit that when I first heard the rumours about the nickel mine at Suomalahti operated by Finn Mining Ltd, I thought I was on to a scoop. Every reporter is on the hunt for a good scoop. A scoop is a story that goes viral, that is on everybody’s lips. Many factors indicated that this was such a story. Now, as I look back at what happened and what this story is actually about, I realise that I was only partly right and that I acted wrongly with regard to virtually everything of any relevance. I will begin by explaining what I have learned about the company and a little of what I have learned about myself.

  The nickel mine at Suomalahti was inaugurated in 2007. However, that is not where the story begins. Mauri Ylijoki’s book More Precious than Gold – The Story of the Finnish Mining Corporation (Mineral Publications, 1994) explains where everything began and looks back almost one hundred years to 1922, when one Harald Malin, a thirty-two-year-old engineering student and heir to a family of pharmacists, founded the Finnish Mining Corporation, a company later rebranded as Finn Mining Ltd.

  In many ways overseeing the operations of the Finnish Mining Corporation was a bold leap for Malin, a man more accustomed to working at a desk, and he duly enlisted both his own mother and a number of his friends to become supporters and patrons of the company. The principal objective in founding the corporation was, naturally, to make money. Thus the goldmine at Salla, the corporation’s first venture, was an excellent start, both in terms of expectations and profile.

  Things soon became far more complicated than Malin had first imagined. The north of Finland is cold and there is lots of snow throughout the year, with the exception of the short summer months, which end with the incessant rains of autumn. Malin, who until this point had lived and worked solely in Helsinki and the southernmost parts of Finland, wrote in letters and briefings about the great challenges the snow and rain presented for mining operations in the north. He described how the mining complex was at times entirely under water, how there was often so much snow that it stood several metres thick on the ground, and cursed that the unforgiving winter froze everything.

  Malin also wrote extensively about the impact on local rivers and lakes, or rather he wrote about what angry ramblers, fishermen and residents told him was happening. The fish were disappearing, the water stank and had turned a shade of green. Either that, or the water was grey and the fish were green. It is to Malin’s credit that the Finnish Mining Corporation not only understood the gravity of the situation, but also took action to rectify it.

  It stopped draining water from the mining complex directly into local tributaries and began storing industrial sewage and treating it at the mine. Naturally this didn’t come free, a fact of which Malin was only too aware. Thus the goldmine, which had only ever made a small profit, was now focussed solely on balancing the books. The company was not making a profit and was not losing money. This cycle continued for years. As technology developed, Malin eventually came to make a success of the goldmine at Salla and the Finnish Mining Corporation. Turning the company’s fortunes around took almost fifteen years. In that time Malin shortened his name to Mali, in response to the wave of Finnish nationalist sentiment in the 1930s.

  As mentioned, the Finnish Mining Corporation was eventually rebranded as Finn Mining Ltd, and the company used its English name from that point onwards. (From today’s perspective it is hard to remember, and harder still to understand, that during the 1980s and 1990s the names of Finnish companies were routinely renamed with dynamic English titles or names in cod-Latin, meaning that the company’s field and scope remained a mystery to all concerned.) Despite its new name, some things remained unchanged at Finn Mining Ltd. The CEO was still a member of the Mali family. After Harald Malin, the company was run first by his son Gerhard Mali, then by his grandson Matti Mali. The company was proud of its values and took care to nurture its public image – until that too came to an end. This is a period not covered in Ylijoki’s book.

  At the dawn of the new millennium Matti Mali rose to the top of the company. By now it was a company of which people expected great things. Either it had to be expanded or it would have to be wound down. Mali chose to expand. The choice seemed to reflect the values of the age. Innovators in Finland were frantically looking for new growth industries; more specifically they were looking for something that might just be the next money-spinner for the Finnish exchequer.

  Matti Mali realised that his opportunity had come. He acquired mining rights for the area around Suomalahti f
or the sum of two euros and began an initial exploratory dig. It was easy to sell politicians promises of the positive impact the mine would have on local employment and the economy, because those same politicians seemed uninterested in how realistic the project was; and in particular weren’t curious about anything that would last into the next and subsequent electoral cycles. Meanwhile it was easy to sell investors the financial side of the project; especially in a world where there is far too much money, and loans (and debt) can be acquired by any company or individual with a mind to do so; a world in which the need to build and the need for nickel would never end. Everybody involved in the project and all those lobbying in its favour were convinced that Finland was set to become the new innovative bellwether of the mining and mineral industry – this, despite the fact that our soil is notoriously ore-depleted, and that we in Finland don’t have the kind of experience in either field that could be considered in any way exceptional in the global arena. Dissenting voices were immediately branded either eco-warriors or hardened communists.

  The mine began operating in May 2007, and it was a disaster from the very outset.

  If those involved in starting the project had taken the time to acquaint themselves with the history of the company and the difficulties experienced by Harald Malin, we would all have been saved a lot of trouble. The mine at Suomalahti employed a technique known as bioleaching, a process that had never before been used in a real-life situation. One can only wonder why the engineers at the mine decided to test-run this technique in the most demanding conditions imaginable. It quickly became apparent that the process was far too complicated, far too expensive and staggeringly ineffective; it also produced untold quantities of wastewater – as, indeed, the name already suggests. Plenty of rain and snow fell from the northern skies in Harald Malin’s day, and this fact has not changed. There has never been any shortage of snow in northern Finland. Crucially, the owners of the Suomalahti mine only woke up to this fact once it was too late.

  Retaining wastewater is an expensive business. Finn Mining Ltd was woefully unprofitable long before the winters of 2010–2012, which saw record snowfall. The financial crash of 2008 made sure there was no excess cash hanging around the company for the proverbial rainy day. In the spring of 2012, Matti Mali was forced to make a decision that would change the face of the company forever. The company’s need for more capital had reached breaking point, and Mali acted fast. Finn Mining Ltd’s new partner was an investment company named North Venture Finland, which itself comprised four separate investment companies linked in a limited partnership agreement. By following the money of the limited partnerships we discover the true identities of those behind North Venture Finland. They are the same men as those on the board of Finn Mining Ltd: Hannu Valtonen (Director of Research & Development), Giorgi Sebrinksi (Sales Director), Kimmo Karmio (Financial & Investment Advisor) and Alan Stilson (Head of Human Resources). As the balance of power shifted, North Venture Finland secured a voting majority within Finn Mining Ltd, and the four men duly became the new board of directors. Matti Mali remained a figurehead for the company, but beyond that he, like the Suomalahti mine, was left out in the cold.

  The new board of directors decided to turn the company’s fortunes around. No stone would be left unturned, both figuratively and literally. Staff were made redundant, the organisation was overhauled and operations streamlined. Still it wasn’t enough. The problem was the same as it had been for Harald Malin: the volume of waste produced by the mining procedures and the high costs of treating that waste. Eventually the board decided to do away with these costs altogether. (A taped conversation between the four members of the board is available here. In conversation are Valtonen, Sebrinski, Karmio and Stilson.) A decision was taken to allow unprocessed wastewater to be drained directly into the local groundwater. Along the eastern edge of the mining complex, a series of ditches was excavated, a metre wide and a metre deep, from which vats of industrial sewage were emptied directly into local waters.

  Precisely how much wastewater has been channelled into surrounding lakes and rivers is as yet unknown. But the samples, the collection of which ultimately cost biologist Tero Manninen his life, demonstrate that the damage is extensive and to some degree irreversible. (The full report on the state of the water in Kuusijoki can be found here. For instance, sulphate and mercury levels are tens of thousands of times higher than the legal limit.) It is hard to estimate the levels of wastewater dumped into the environment from the Suomalahti mine. Producing such estimates is challenging, and it will only be when spring and summer arrive that we will be able to assess what the future holds for the local rivers and lakes. What is abundantly clear, however, is that this is damage on a massive scale.

  Furthermore, nobody will be held accountable.

  All four members of the board (Valtonen, Sebrinski, Karmio and Stilson) are dead. The Helsinki police are currently looking into their deaths. Finn Mining Ltd is essentially bankrupt, and it is only a matter of days before the decommissioning of the mine will be officially announced. The task of cleaning up the area around the mine is left to the Finnish taxpayer. Having remained in operation since 1922, the Finnish Mining Corporation is set to disappear, as is the Mali dynasty. Matti Mali, who led the organisation for a long time, as had his father and grandfather before him, died at his home last night of a sudden illness. He had no heirs.

  As attentive readers will note, the events outlined above contain at least three news items that could be considered scoops. If I were still the reporter who eagerly began work on this case, I would have saved each revelation for a separate article. The reason I did not do this is, paradoxically, that investigating this story has cost me too much and the benefit I receive from it is minimal. At least, that’s what it feels like today.

  The biologist Tero Manninen was murdered, as was Kari Lehtinen, a journalist who has investigated the company in the past. (One of Lehtinen’s most memorable articles, ‘A Bitter Pill – The Story of the Finnish Anti-Vaccination Movement’ can be found here.) The men responsible for both murders are now dead. The repercussions of events at Suomalahti will last years and will cost millions.

  Despite the longevity and severity of these events, people will talk about the story for a few days, perhaps a few weeks, then the story will be forgotten altogether. When the next mining project gets under way and starts jostling for political backing, nobody will recall or remember what happened at Suomalahti.

  Or will they?

  12

  ‘Thank you,’ said Emil and sipped his already tepid coffee. A moment ago he had been sitting by himself, waiting for the doorbell to ring and watching the morning brighten on the other side of the window. Minute by minute the sunlight had glowed warmer. The library too had come to life, people coming in and out.

  He felt old but free. It wasn’t a bad sensation.

  ‘For what?’ asked Janne and looked at him. A young man with glasses, his hair slightly ruffled and one side of his shirt collar stuck beneath the neck of his woollen jumper. His son had no idea that he was the first person in years whom Emil had invited to the flat, allowed into his home.

  ‘I read your text. Twice. Your phone has probably been ringing off the hook.’

  Janne glanced outside, stirred the long spoon through his coffee. Janne had asked for a coffee with milk and Emil had made him one.

  ‘More than ever.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Janne shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not what I would have done before.’

  Emil imagined he knew what his son meant.

  ‘I’m sure you understand,’ Janne continued. ‘This hasn’t been easy for me.’

  ‘I’ve already said, I’d give my life…’

  Janne shook his head. ‘I don’t want to hear that again. And I haven’t said everything yet.’

  ‘Very well.’

  They sat in silence. Janne drank his coffee and wiped his upper lip.

  ‘There are times when I wish I
didn’t know what I know.’

  Emil said nothing.

  ‘Then there are other moments…’

  Janne looked as though he hadn’t slept at all, or as though he’d caught at most a few hours’ sleep on the sofa at his office. The crumpled clothes, the straggly hair and the bags beneath his eyes certainly suggested it.

  ‘It seems you can’t have everything,’ he said.

  ‘That’s true enough.’

  ‘Someone else can write the story. My boss is livid with me. I’ll probably be able to keep my job, but I’ll spend a long time writing pieces about twerking and things like that.’

  ‘Twerking? What…?’

  Janne looked at him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Pauliina and I sort out our differences. She sent me a message, said she’d read the story and understood what I’d done, of course. We’re meeting this evening.’

  ‘I hope…’

  ‘But that doesn’t change the fact that something has to be done about this … matter. About the things you told me.’

  Emil turned the coffee cup in his hands. The day would soon reach its lightest point.

  ‘When we met for the first time – the first time in a long while, that is – you told me that writing means everything to you,’ said Emil. ‘That it’s a way of working through your thoughts.’

  ‘You read what I wrote this morning. I can’t…’

  Emil nodded and continued. ‘Let’s think about this from another angle. It doesn’t need to be printed in the newspaper.’

  Janne looked at him and leaned back on his chair. His appearance was still slightly dishevelled, but now he was alert, more alert than he had been only seconds before.

  ‘Talk to me,’ said Janne.