Salting the mine

We have not had a proper salting of a mine for quite a few years. Of course the definition of a mine has always been a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it. That must persist as a warning since, however one looks at it, until a mine isestablished it is not in fact a mine.

However, I well remember discussing with Willy West (known as Woolly Vest) of Durlacher West in the latish nineteen nineties the case for shorting Bre-X, a gold mine claimed deep in the jungle of Indonesia. I was attracted to this idea since moderated behaviour was not occurring and the punters were determined to get a slice of the action on borrowed money, often through Wood Gundy of Toronto. Be it noted that Bre-X was an overseas structure and that always presents difficulties since positive or adverse information emerges around the main dealing centre. I would have preferred London since I knew my way round here very comfortably in contrast to the different time zone and other differences that had to be taken into account arising in Toronto.

Further, a friend who represented Barrick Gold in Indonesia had been asked by HO to look into Bre-X but faced the difficulty that Bre-X management would not let him and his geologists go anywhere near this claimed mine. So, quite naturally, they held back.

It then emerged that the mine samples presented to the independent assay laboratory were in fact suppressed and a sample prepared by Bre-X management confirmed a vast mine in prospect. Or so the punters thought.

The losses sustained by Wood Gundy were massive and those of the punters led to bankruptcies.

Finally, the Bre-X geologist who got the scam going committed suicide by jumping out of his helicopter. Or so it was thought at the time. The problem was that the pathologist opined that the broken bones were not consistent with those that would have been sustained in the fall and the body had been decomposing for appreciably more than the four days after the jump when the pathologist carried out his review. This suggests that the geologist was murdered. I presume that if so nobody will be convicted now.