TO ALL.....
Found this just now....sorry if already posted...is this the article that was in todays globe and mail.
Tampering seen in Bre-X study
Expert on gold grains believes samples altered
Saturday, May 3, 1997
By Michael Den Tandt
The Globe and Mail
A detailed study of rock samples provided by Bre-X Minerals Ltd. to an Australian mining
consultant last year shows clear signs of tampering, an independent analysis has concluded.
Stuart Averill, an expert on "fingerprinting" gold grains and president of Overburden Drilling
Management Ltd. of Nepean, Ont., spent yesterday studying the Australian report, prepared for
Bre-X last fall by Perth-based mining consultant Normet Pty. Ltd. Mr. Averill had no access to the
actual rock samples.
About a dozen rounded gold particles described by Roger Townend and Associates, a metallurgical
firm subcontracted by Normet, are clearly alluvial in origin, Mr. Averill said.
Alluvial gold grains are rounded by water. The Busang deposit is bedrock. It is extremely unlikely
that rounded grains like those described in the Normet report would occur naturally in bedrock, Mr.
Averill said.
"These are classic descriptions of placer [alluvial] gold," he added.
An earlier version of the Normet report suggested a similar conclusion. However, that report,
accounts of which were published in The Globe and Mail and elsewhere, was incomplete.
The complete version provides even stronger evidence that the gold examined by Normet was
introduced into the Busang samples after the rock was taken out of the ground and before it was
assayed, Mr. Averill said.
One indicator, apart from the rounded particles, is that more than 90 per cent of the gold was found
to be recoverable by means of a Knelson gravity concentrator.
Put simply, this means the gold grains fell right out of the crushed rock. In addition, many of the
particles had rims rich in silver -- another common alluvial trait.
Finally, the very presence of heavy, coarse gold at Busang is unusual, the engineer said.
"The reported coarse size and rounded form of the gold grains and the exceptionally high rate of
gold recovery by gravity means are very unusual, especially for a low-temperature, epithermal
deposit such as Busang, as epithermal gold is characteristically very fine-grained," Mr. Averill wrote
in his review, commissioned by The Globe and Mail.
Overburden Drilling Management is not an assay lab. Its specialty is physical analysis of gold grains.
In his career, Mr. Averill has examined hundreds of thousands of grains from tens of thousands of
exploration samples worldwide.
Mr. Averill is credited with the discovery of the Casa Berardi gold mines in Quebec, and is the
author of numerous scientific papers on gold grains.
The firm has done detective work for companies trying to determine whether gold prospects are
valid, or the product of tampering.
When the descriptions of rounded gold grains in the Normet study first became known last month,
Normet managing director Philip Hearse said the grains may have been rounded in the milling
process. Mr. Averill said that is not possible.
The milling process would have scratched and scarred the grains, he said. "In theory you might be
able to round one grain . . . but not grain after grain," he said.
Normet officials could not be reached for comment yesterday. Bre-X officials also could not be
reached.
The earlier Normet report was dated last July. The complete version is dated Oct. 16, 1996, and
was made available to The Globe and Mail yesterday.
On March 27, Bre-X's stock crashed from $15.50 to $2.50 after the company released preliminary
drilling results from Busang by Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., which had acquired rights
to develop the property. Freeport's drilling showed "insignificant" gold.
Bre-X also cited "visual differences" noticed by Freeport when comparing gold particles in its
samples to particles obtained from Bre-X. This was widely interpreted by mining-industry insiders
as a suggestion that the samples had been salted.
For two weeks after the crash, Bre-X pointedly refused to elaborate on the "visual differences."
However, Bre-X chairman David Walsh repeatedly insisted that salting was impossible, given the
huge number of samples -- as many as 35,000 bags of rock, each weighing 13 kilograms --
collected from Busang over the past several years.
Then Bre-X vice-president Steven McAnulty asserted there were several types of gold in the
Busang deposit -- rounded, nuggety and a third type that he couldn't describe. His comment, which
was never elaborated upon or explained, was dismissed as meaningless by several mining-industry
analysts.
Three billion dollars evaporated in the Bre-X stock crash. Canadian financial markets were thrown
into turmoil. Junior mining stocks collapsed, then went into a coma.
Bre-X's Mr. Walsh has insisted it was all a terrible mistake, and suggested Freeport's testing
methods may have been to blame. He has said repeatedly that his company will be vindicated by an
independent audit done for Bre-X by Strathcona Mineral Services Ltd. of Toronto.
Strathcona's results, which have been hungrily anticipated by everyone connected to the Bre-X
saga, are expected to be released Monday before the markets open.
However, many industry analysts, assayers and geologists have said during the past month that it
would be extremely surprising if Freeport is proven wrong, given that it has continued to study its
Busang samples for the past month and continued to find no gold.
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