Wednesday, May 7, 1997
Felderhof seen as key to
Bre-X scandal
Bre-X geologist had direct control of shipping
core samples, but he denies any involvement in
Busang fraud
By PAUL BAGNELL
Mining Reporter The Financial Post
Withdrawn to his $3-million home in the Cayman Islands,
John Felderhof is now the subject of intense speculation
among those trying to make sense out of the Busang
gold-tampering scandal.
Felderhof, the senior vice-president and top geologist for
Bre-X Minerals Ltd., has denied any involvement in the huge
fraud surrounding the company's Busang gold project.
"I personally believe that there are significant amounts of gold
at Busang," Felderhof said in a statement on Monday. "I
know that I was not involved in a fraud."
But experts who have followed the
rise and fall of Bre-X find it
incomprehensible that Felderhof
could have been unaware of the
massive fraud that has apparently
taken place right up until the end.
Even more difficult to believe, they
say, is the notion that Felderhof
could have read metallurgic reports
prepared on Bre-X's ore samples
and not realized there was
something drastically wrong.
Comprehensive and systematic tampering of samples has
been suggested by Strathcona Mineral Services Ltd. as lying
behind Bre-X's fabulous estimates of Busang's wealth.
"It's very difficult to imagine, given the litany of things
identified by Strathcona, that he couldn't have known," said
one mining analyst who has followed Bre-X closely. "Or that
he wouldn't have asked questions."
Numerous other experts voiced similar views. "I question
whether he was totally ignorant right up to the very end,'' said
California-based gold mining analyst John Kaiser.
"He must have read the Normet report and, given his
experience, it should have raised a red flag for him.''
A July 1996, report by Australian metallurgic consultant
Normet Pty, provided clear evidence that gold particles
found in Bre-X's rock samples did not belong there.
Another analyst who visited both the Busang site and the
laboratory that tested Bre-X samples claims that the samples
were delivered to Indo Assay Laboratories from a
warehouse in Samarinda now considered a likely staging
ground for the "salting" of Bre-X rock samples.
When touring Indo Assay, the analyst said yesterday, the lab
manager said Bre-X samples were not delivered to the lab
during periods when both Felderhof and Bre-X's
vice-president, exploration, Michael de Guzman were away
from Busang.
De Guzman, now dead, was Felderhof's colleague and
co-discoverer of Busang.
"I was told by the lab that the samples didn't arrive until
Felderhof or de Guzman got back to the property.
"The samples didn't come on a regular basis. When those
guys were away, nothing came to the laboratory. And, when
they got back, samples started flooding in again."
Also odd, the analyst said, is the fact that Felderhof and de
Guzman -- during a two-day tour of Bre-X facilities -- never
once mentioned the Samarinda warehouse.
The Strathcona report points directly at the company's
Samarinda facility as the site where tampering likely occurred.
Strathcona discovered that bagged rock samples often spent
weeks at the Samarinda warehouse.
But Bre-X, in a summary of its sampling and assay
procedures released on April 9, did not mention storing
samples at Samarinda before delivering them to Indo Assay
in the Indonesian city of Balikpapan.
The Bre-X summary says samples were shipped by boat to
"the Samarinda wharf" and then "moved to Balikpapan by
truck."
The Samarinda warehouse is only mentioned as a place
where samples were stored after assaying, not before. |
