Zambia will fine and break ties with mining firms that fail to operate according to the southern African country's laws, President Edgar Lungu said on Thursday.
Discovery comes on the heels of a government's study showing the miner's Cascabel project will be one of the world’s ten largest copper, silver and gold mines.
In its heyday during the commodities supercycle of the early 2000s, Red Kite managed about $3.5 billion and was responsible for supplying about 15% of the copper China was consuming.
Freeport agreed to build a copper smelter in Indonesia within five years of closing a deal last December with the Indonesian government on the operatorship of the giant Grasberg copper mine.