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JAKARTA, April 11 (AFP) - An executive of the
main Indonesian shareholder in the Busang gold
mine project Friday denied that he intended to
buy into Bre-X Minerals, a Canadian partner in
the troubled deal.
"That is only newspapers' talk, there is no such
plan. Why should we buy when we are already inside
(the Busang project)," said Bob Hasan who heads
PT Nusantara Ampera Bakti (Nusamba) a company owned
by foundations controlled by Indonesian President
Suharto.
A press report in Canada alleged that Hasan was
trying to buy into Bre-X, the Canadian mining
company firm which holds a 45 percent stake in the
Busang mine which has been at the centre of a
major intrigue here.
Nusamba holds 30 percent of the shares in Busang,
the Indonesian government holds 10 percent,
Bre-X has 45 percent while the US mining giant
Freeport McMoRan has 15 percent of the shares.
Hasan said the shareholders were still waiting for
a due dilligence report, an independent assessment
of the potential gold deposit in Busang before
moving ahead with the deal.
He added that it would still take up to four months
before any concrete results of the report could be
produced.
"If there is no (gold) content, we will pull
out...why should we remain if there is nothing
inside," Bob Hasan told journalists in Jakarta.
Bre-X, a Canadian mining company which originally
claimed 90 percent ownership of the Busang field
and described it as the world's richest gold find,
admitted last month that its previous estimates of
the find may have been exaggerated.
Strathcona Mineral Services Limited, an independent
consultant reported that "there appears to be a
strong possibility that the potential gold resources
on the Busang project in East Kalimantan have been
overstated because of invalid samples and assaying of
those samples. "
Bre-X brought in US firm Freeport-McMoRan Copper and
Gold into the deal in an arrangement approved by the
Indonesian government.
In a statement last week Freeport said it had drilled
seven core holes in the project to confirm Bre-X
results but added that so far, "analyses of these cores,
which remain incomplete, indicate insignificant amounts
of gold."
The revelations have sent the prices of Bre-X at the
Toronto stock market tumbling, forcing the bourse to
temporarily halt trading in the shares. |
