Kinross Gold Corp
KGC
Materials
2
exclusion reasons
2 themes
This page is part of our public exclusion list — a transparency tool that shows which companies we screen out and why. It is not investment advice, and it is not an accusation. But it is subject to change as our understanding of the facts evolves.
Kinross Gold Corporation is a Canadian-based gold and silver mining company with operations spanning the United States, Brazil, Chile, Mauritania, and Canada. Its core business is the extraction of precious metals, a primary activity under the extractive industries exclusion.
The company has a documented pattern of regulatory violations across its operations. In 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced a settled action against Kinross for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, resulting in a $950,000 penalty. Furthermore, a federal judge ruled in 2022 that the company’s subsidiary, Crown Resources, committed over 3,000 violations of the Clean Water Act at its Buckhorn Mountain gold mine in Washington state. ViolationTracker documents additional workplace safety penalties totaling over $416,000.
A 2017 report by Above Ground and Justiça Global also investigated allegations of human rights abuses linked to Kinross Gold’s operations in Brazil. While the company promotes a strong sustainability performance and a multi-billion dollar benefit footprint, its record of environmental, anti-corruption, and human rights compliance failures demonstrates the material risks inherent in its extractive business model.
Kinross Gold Corp’s subsidiary, Crown Resources, operated the Buckhorn Mountain gold mine in Washington state. A federal judge ruled in October 2022 that the operation committed more than 3,000 violations of the Clean Water Act. The court found the companies repeatedly violated their pollution-discharge permit, failing to contain contaminated wastewater from the mine site.
The lawsuit, initiated after a 2013 notice from environmental groups, documented a pattern of non-compliance with water quality limits. The violations involved the discharge of pollutants, including heavy metals, from the mine's water treatment system into surrounding waterways. This ruling confirms a prolonged period of operational negligence leading to documented water contamination.
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