Sir, Your report “US law to squeeze ‘conflict minerals’” (August 18) highlights the extreme ignorance of US lawmakers of the efforts made by small and mid-cap mining companies to bring higher standards of corporate governance and transparency to the extractive industries operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighbouring countries.

At face value it would seem that the only people who would gain from such legislation would be the mega-cap miners that do not operate in the region or the Chinese, Russian and central Asian mining companies that would be able to launder such minerals into the global supply chain should such trade be driven underground.

In fact, such legislation would likely benefit the very warlords and corrupt politicians at whom it is targeted, given that it would give them greater latitude to control the supply chain as the legitimate small and mid-cap miners currently operating in the region would be driven out of existence.

No effort has been made to understand that some publicly listed mining companies are operating perfectly legitimate and above board operations to the benefit of the state and the local population; instead, we see more of the broad-brush xenophobia so often exercised in US legislation and foreign policy.

It will be dark day should the provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial reform act be adopted at face value.

Russell Corn,

Deputy Chief Executive,

Diligence Inc,

London E14, UK

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.