[5] During 1979–1980, these Drummond brothers, along with company executive Clyde Black, were indicted for bribing three Alabama legislators, by means of supplying them with prostitutes.

"[10] It was known as Estate of Rodriquez v. Drummond Co. By 2009, a U.S. federal court ruled in favor of the company, concluding that it had never supported any action of illegal groups.

[11] In February 2013, journalist Alejandro Arias reported with photographic evidence dumping of hundreds of tons of coal into the Caribbean Sea by the company a month earlier.

[14] In October 2018, David Roberson, previously the company's vice-president of government affairs, was sentenced to "two-and-a-half years in prison, followed by one year of supervised release", and fined $25,000 for his July 2018 convictions, alongside those of attorney Joel Iverson Gilbert (formerly, a partner active in Balch & Bingham's Environmental and Natural Resources section), on "six criminal charges each relating to a scheme intended to stop expansion of a toxic cleanup site in Jefferson County by the Environmental Protection Agency", through a bribe to former basketball player, then state legislator Oliver Robinson (who was also convicted), through use of his nonprofit organization, The Oliver Robinson Foundation.

[2] According to Forbes, it is "the largest single producer of foundry coke in the U.S.."[2] Starting 2015, Drummond funneled money though its law firm Balch & Bingham to a retired state legislator Oliver Robinson.

In exchange for over $100,000, Robinson encouraged residents not to cooperate with the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to list areas of north Birmingham as a Superfund site due to pollution caused by ABC.

[19][20][21][22] In 2000, the local branch of Sintramienergetica, the union that represents hundreds of Drummond workers, held several meetings with executives about contract negotiations and safety concerns.

[20] About a month later, paramilitaries stopped a company bus carrying union leaders Valmore Locarno and Victor Orcasita and other workers from the La Loma mine at the end of a shift on March 12, 2001.

“The negotiations would break down and all of a sudden we would get a train blown up,” said Adkins, who believes that the guerrilla groups were enforcing the interests of the union, but declined to provide any proof.

The executives, former president of Drummond Augusto Jimenez and current president Jose Miguel Linares, are accused of financing the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), which was the country's largest and deadliest paramilitary group in the decades long civil war in Colombia, during which paramilitaries and the government clashed with leftwing guerrillas.