Who is Garry Neil Drummond? Is he H.E.’s boy, the son of Drummond Co.’s founder, H.E. Drummond, who started the company in Jasper Alabama by putting up his 3 mules for collateral on a $300 bank loan in 1935? Is he Garry, the young civil engineering student who graduated from the University of Alabama in 1961 and became the company’s first engineer?

Or is he Mr. Drummond, the man who owns 100% of the U.S.-based coal mining company, whose majority of assets are made up of a series of open-pit coal mines sprinkled across Colombia’s Northern Caribbean coast? Is he Mr. Drummond, the man who directs a volume of mining activity in Colombia that turns out most of Drummond’s $3 billion in revenues (2012), pays some $278 million in royalties to the Colombian state, and accounts for 25% of Colombia’s total mining royalties?

Most in Colombia recognize him as the latter man. And since 1986, when Drummond Co. acquired its first mine in Colombia, Garry Neil Drummond has earned more and more attention for the controversy surrounding his company.

Recently, Mr. Drummond’s company has been fined more than $100 million and got its shipping license revoked for a a series of blunders, including failure to pay taxes and intending to cover up an environmentally hazardous coal spill through 2013. From Colombia Reports…

The Alabama-based company was forced to close its private Caribbean port two weeks ago when it failed to meet the January 1st deadline for the implementation of a direct-loading conveyer belt system. The deadline was set by the Colombian Environmental Ministry after a company barge dumped almost 2,000 tons of coal into the Bay of Santa Marta last year. The regulation outlawing crane-and-barge coal loading had been in place for six years prior to the incident.

But the company has also come under attack in the US for alleged links to paramilitaries and funding the murder of several union leaders who represent Colombian miners at Drummond. From Business and Human Rights…

In 2002, the families of three deceased Colombian labour leaders and the union they belonged to, Sintramienergética, filed suit against Drummond Company, Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary Drummond Ltd. in US federal court.  The plaintiffs alleged that Drummond hired Colombian paramilitaries to kill and torture the three labour leadersin 2001.  Sintramienergética represents workers at Drummond’s coal mining operations in Colombia…

Drummond Co. seems generally quick to dispute the legal matters it faces in its Colombian operations. But it’s hard to know exactly what Garry Neil Drummond really thinks about any of the complex matters surrounding Drummond’s coal mining in Colombia. For example, in 2012, beset by accusations that he sponsored murder in Colombia, Garry Neil Drummond reportedly confessed,

“I was never in charge of anything in Colombia.”

photo credit: Portafolio