Citing a statement from China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the official Xinhua News Agency reported late Tuesday that the for detained employees of Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto Stern Hu, Liu Caikui, Ge Minqiang and Wang Yong – have been formally charged by Chinese prosecutors with corporate espionage and bribery.

The report says the charges carry penalties that could either be in the form of a fine or else prison term up to seven years.

While Hu is an Australian national, who headed Rio Tinto’s iron ore business in Shanghai, Liu, Ge and Wang are Chinese citizens.

Xinhua report said the statement that “found evidence to prove that they were involved in commercial bribery,” further elaborated that initial investigations revealed that the four accused had managed to obtain commercial secrets about the Chinese iron and steel industry using improper means; thereby violating the criminal law of the country.

Already the six-week detention of the Rio Tinto employees – about which Australia says it has not yet received any formal advice from China - has led to a strain in the relations between the two countries. 

Commenting on the charges, Michael McKinley, a professor of global politics at Canberra’s Australian National University, said that the Chinese government is apparently “quite happy for this to be made a reasonably high profile case both within China and outside.”