Bre-X


Book Description

It was hailed as the biggest gold discovery this century, worth more than u15 billion, but it turned out to be a big mining scandal. This is an account of how, in 1995, Bre-X Minerals, a small Canadian mining company, shot to world fame and fortune after announcing the discovery of 71 million ounces of gold at the Busang site, on the island of Borneo, Indonesia. The value of Bre-X shares soared from $5 to $192.50 within minutes of listing in Toronto in 1996."




Bre-X


Book Description

For 2 years, BRE-X was the darling of the world's stock markets. Millionaires were created over night; until the scam was uncovered.




Bre-X


Book Description




Gold of Bre-X


Book Description

Between 1994 and 1997, Canadian company Bre-X Minerals, sponsored and promoted to listings on the TSX and NASDAQ by JPMorgan, Lehman, BMO, and others, was exploring for gold on the Busang property on the Indonesian island of Borneo. Bre-X’s efforts bore the discovery of a lifetime: a mammoth deposit estimated to contain over 200 million ounces of easily extractable gold. The company’s stock exploded from 25 cents to over $270, effectively valuing Bre-X at over $6 billion and attracting the interest of major mining companies. Barrick, Placer Dome, and Freeport McMorran, all the major players at the time, started competing to develop the largest gold deposit ever discovered. In early 1997, Indonesian President Suharto and his government took control of the deposit by force and commissioned Freeport to build a mega mine. In the ensuing months, due diligence revealed that the deposit was a gigantic hoax! There was no gold in Busang. The principals of Bre-X were accused, but never convicted, of salting samples before sending them to labs. Michael de Guzman, a Filipino geologist who served as the project manager, allegedly committed suicide by jumping from a helicopter into the abyss of Borneo’s jungle. Minorca Resources of Toronto were the financial partners of the Haji Sayakarani group of companies that owned Busang; Alfred Lenarciak was the chairman of Minorca at the time. In a strange twist of fate, in February 2012, Alfred had a chance encounter in Rome with a man by the name of Akiro Guzzo, who shared with him an amazing story about the life and death of Michael de Guzman, the creator of a fake gold mega deposit. Is this really a dead man’s story?




Gold


Book Description

From the award-winning author of Diamond: A blazing exploration of the human love affair with gold that “combines the engaging style of a travel narrative with sharp-eyed journalistic exposé” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the price of gold skyrocketed—in three years more than doubling from $800 an ounce to $1900. This massive spike drove an unprecedented global gold-mining and exploration boom, much bigger than the gold rush of the 1800s. In Gold, acclaimed author Matthew Hart takes you on an unforgettable journey around the world and through history to tell the extraordinary story of how gold became the world’s most precious commodity. Beginning with a page-turning report from the crime-ridden inferno of the world’s deepest mine, Hart traveled around the world to the sites of the hottest action in gold today, from the biggest new mine in China, to the highly secretive London gold exchange, and the lair of the world’s most powerful gold trader in Geneva, Switzerland. He profiles the leaders of the gold market today, the nature of the current boom, and the likely prospects for the future. From the earliest civilizations, when gold was an icon of sacred and kingly power, Hart tracks its evolution, through conquest, murder, and international mayhem, into the speculative casino-chip that the metal has become. He ends by telling the story of the massive flows of gold that have occurred in the wake of the financial crisis and what the world’s leading experts are saying about the profound changes underway in the gold market and the prospects for the future. “Compelling, stylish, and impressively researched” (The Boston Globe), Gold is a wonderful historical odyssey with important implications for today’s global economy.




Bre-X: Dead Man’S Story?


Book Description

Between 1994 and 1997, Canadian-based Bre-X Minerals sponsored and enthusiastically promoted listings on the TSX and NASDAQ by JPMorgan, Lehman, BMO, Scotia as well as others, who were exploring for gold on the Busang property on the Indonesian island of Borneo. Their efforts bore the discovery of a lifetime: a mammoth deposit speculated to contain over 200 million ounces of easily extractable gold. The companys stock exploded from 25 cents to $270, giving them a valuation of over $6 billion. Major mining companies like Barrick, Placer Dome and Freeport McMoran started competing to develop the largest gold deposit ever discovered. In early 1997, Suharto and his Indonesian government took control of the deposit, by force, and commissioned Freeport to build a mega mine. In the ensuing months, due diligence revealed that the deposit was a gigantic hoax! There was no gold in Busang. The principals of Bre-X were accused (but never convicted) of salting (adding gold) the samples before sending them to the labs. Michael de Guzman, a Filipino geologist who served as the project manager, infamously jumped from a helicopter into the abyss of Borneos jungle. Minorca Resources of Toronto were the financial partners of the Haji Saykerani group of companies who owned Busang. Alfred Lenarciak was the chairman of Minorca at the time. In a strange twist of fate, in February of 2012, Alfred had a chance encounter in Rome, Italy with a man named Akiro Guzzo, who shared with him an amazing story on the life and death of Michael de Guzman: is this really a dead mans story?




Indonesian Gold


Book Description

Based on events surrounding the infamous, billion-dollar BRE-X gold fraud, and the determined few who recklessly destroyed so many lives with their all-consuming quest for gold, in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. When Canadian miner Borneo Gold Corporation announces the discovery of gold reserves in excess of twenty million ounces, pundits drive the worthless stock to giddying heights as the rich and powerful in three countries move to secure control over the deposit. Dayak tribes are forced off traditional lands, precipitating ethnic blood feuds and a return to headhunting practices as exploration practices destroy pristine forests and pollute the environment. Indonesian Gold brings a depth of description and colour to the archipelago's ethnic tribes as they resist the flood of Moslem migrants from the poorer, Indonesian islands, and reveals the extent of devastation visited upon indigenous peoples by multinational, mining companies.




Lying for Money


Book Description

An entertaining, deeply informative explanation of how high-level financial crimes work, written by an industry insider who’s an expert in the field. The way most white-collar crime works is by manipulating institutional psychology. That means creating something that looks as much as possible like a normal set of transactions. The drama comes later, when it all unwinds. Financial crime seems horribly complicated, but there are only so many ways you can con someone out of what’s theirs. In Lying for Money, veteran regulatory economist and market analyst Dan Davies tells the story of fraud through a genealogy of financial malfeasance, including: the Great Salad Oil swindle, the Pigeon King International fraud, the fictional British colony of Poyais in South America, the Boston Ladies’ Deposit Company, the Portuguese Banknote Affair, Theranos, and the Bre-X scam. Davies brings new insights into these schemes and shows how all frauds, current and historical, belong to one of four categories (“long firm,” counterfeiting, control fraud, and market crimes) and operate on the same basic principles. The only elements that change are the victims, the scammers, and the terminology. Davies has years of experience picking the bones out of some of the most famous frauds of the modern age. Now he reveals the big picture that emerges from their labyrinths of deceit and explains how fraud has shaped the entire development of the modern world economy.




Financial Serial Killers


Book Description

By using true tales of thieves, swindlers, and fraudsters at work, Financial Serial Killers illustrates how these perpetrators get their hooks into investors' wallets, savings accounts, and portfolios—and never let go. The worst financial crisis since the great depression revealed that thousands of mom and pop investors had lost millions to so-called Mini-Madoffs. They are the thieves and conmen who had used phony financial acumen to steal investors' money, wipe out savings, and damage lives. Financial Serial Killers reveals the cons—from the grand to picayune—advisers cultivate with their victims—relationships that are essential to the fraud. Take the story of Lillian, the little old lady who invested with Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world. After her husband died, she thought her family's treasure of $24 million in stock controlled by Buffett was safe. It was—until a family relative introduced the eighty-nine-year-old grandmother to a pair of unscrupulous insurance agents who convinced her to reinvest her savings in life insurance—decimating her nest egg while padding the agents' pockets. Lillian's story, as well as other accounts of deceit and fraud are the core of Financial Serial Killers. Readers will learn how to better protect their family's wealth and savings after reading this book.




Friction


Book Description

What the struggle over the Indonesian rainforests can teach us about the social frictions that shape the world around us Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light while one stick alone is just a stick. It is the friction that produces movement, action, and effect. Anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing challenges the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a clash of cultures, developing friction as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting social interactions that make up our contemporary world. Tsing focuses on the rainforests of Indonesia, where in the 1980s and 1990s capitalist interests increasingly reshaped the landscape not so much through corporate design as through awkward chains of legal and illegal entrepreneurs that wrested the land from previous claimants, creating resources for distant markets. In response, environmental movements arose to defend the rainforests and the communities of people who live in them. Not confined to a village, province, or nation, the social drama of the Indonesian rainforests includes local and national environmentalists, international science, North American investors, advocates for Brazilian rubber tappers, United Nations funding agencies, mountaineers, village elders, and urban students—all drawn into unpredictable, messy misunderstandings, but misunderstandings that sometimes work out. Providing an invaluable portfolio of methods for the study of global interconnections, Friction shows how cultural differences are in the grip of worldly encounter and reveals how much is overlooked in contemporary theories of the global.