The JVAG report will be on the net by weekend. Meanwhile GOLD SMUGGLER ARRIVES HOME is a headline which appeared in the Waikato Times (New Zealand) December 1999. The gold actually belonged to JVAG! Here is the article in full, in the interest of fairness:
Golden Bay miner Danny Walker has come home after being intercepted at a Mongolian airport last month with gold ingots worth $18,000 hidden in his backpack.
He says he will probably never see the gold again but is planning to return to Mongolia for another season of mining next year.
"I am lucky I'm not rotting in a Mongolian jail," he said. "If I had gone in for five years, I don't think I would ever have come out."
Mr. Walker spent eight months in a joint venture mining for gold on the Mongolian steppes, using two mechanical diggers feeding a rotating gold screen.
His wife and three young children also spent several months in the remote Asian republic. They returned ahead of him.
The gold he was smuggling out without a permit had been melted down into small cones from slag left over after the Mongolian government had carried out the official melting process, he said. The government laboratory did not get the temperature hot enough to extract all the gold and Mr. Walker processed the slag again at a friend's laboratory in the capital, Ulaanbaatar. His relationship with the joint venture company had soured, and it had been taking more that its agreed share of the profits. "Because we had not been paid directly for our gold, I decided to take the gold to New Zealand to sell and try to recover some of what they had been ripping off from me."
But when the 1.1 kg of gold, wrapped in paper and then hidden in a sock in the backpack, was found by Customs officers at Ulaanbaatar airport, it was confiscated. Mr. Walker was questioned for several hours and thern placed under loose house arrest for three weeks while a police investigation was carried out. He was told that the maximum penlaty was fiver years in prison, but eventually got off with a $60 fine imposed by the Mongolian prosecution office.
Mr. Walker says that the British Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, a city of 700,000, was a great help, as were a number of Mongolians. He was also grateful for help from the New Zealand Embassy in Beijing, his lawyer and friends in New Zealand.
His enthusiasm for minng in Mongolia is undiminished and he has begun preparations for returning in March for another summer season.
END OF STORY
Well, not quite.
The gold smuggled and confiscated was from the Toson Terrace placer deposit, a property of Zaamar Goldfields Ltd. of Mongolia (100% subsidiary of Zaamar Goldfields Ltd. of British Virgin Islands, in turn 100% subsidiary of Java Gold Corporation(JVAG on CDN). The property was 90% transferred to Monpolymet by Armand Beaudoin in his capacity as General Director of Zaamar Goldfields Ltd.(Mongolia)a few days before he passed away, but on the verbal understanding that Zaamar Goldfields Ltd. (Mongolia)could continue to process the stockpile they had built up in previous years.
In spite of Danny Walker's unrepentant tone, the courts are at his disposal if he thinks he has been "ripped off". That is what courts and due legal process are for. Meanwhile he should without delay give 1.1 kilos of gold to the rightful owners. If Mr.Walker lost it then that entirely his problem. Having paid a 60$ fine and suffering some distress and expense is of no interest to the rightful owners who he calmly "ripped off" without any due legal process. When people take the law into their own hands something should be done through the courts or peer-group pressure.
Watch this space.
Robin Grayson
General Director of Eco-Minex International Ltd. |
