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International Precious Metals Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
Phoenix, June 19 (Bloomberg) -- International Precious Metals Corp., which last year was the most prominent of a handful of small mining companies looking for gold in the Arizona desert, today filed for bankruptcy reorganization.
The filing comes seven months after the company released independent tests that showed it found less gold than it previously indicated to investors.
Its stock, which traded as high as 13 3/4 in March 1997, fell 9 cents to 3 cents today.
IPM, which is based in Toronto but has most of its operations in Phoenix, claimed it had developed new technology for extracting gold from desert sands. Mining experts, however, were skeptical of the company's methods.
We found nothing there,'' said Nyal Niemuth, a mining engineer with the Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources. ''If there had been a discovery, somebody would have been interested and it would have gone forward.''
An IPM spokesman wasn't immediately available to comment. A recording at the company's Phoenix office said it was closed today.
The company issued a brief statement saying it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A listing of the company's assets and liabilities wasn't immediately available from the bankruptcy court.
IPM sued the Arizona mining department in April 1997 to keep it from commenting on the company.
I never had any doubts I was correct,'' Niemuth said of earlier statements he made questioning IPM's gold claims.
IPM was delisted from the Nasdaq SmallCap Market in April of this year in part because of questions about statements it made in press releases regarding test results at its Arizona mine, the company said.
IPM was one of about half a dozen small U.S. and Canadian mining companies known as ''desert-dirt plays'' because of their claims of previously undiscovered gold strikes in Arizona and California.
It developed a feverish following among some investors, who posted comments about the company on Internet bulletin boards. On the Silicon Investor site (www.techstocks.com), IPM had more comments posted than most other companies, according to the site's administrator.
21:35:34 06/19/1998
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