A mine company’s claim that it had found a sizable payment of golden deep in the Indonesian jungle sparked a race to invest in the business. But all that glittered was no gold, as a new audio set reveals, and concerns remain about the mysterious death of the bank’s main scientist.
Warning: This article contains clues
On the day of 19 March 1997, Michael de Guzman, chief scientist at French mining firm Bre- X Minerals, boarded a helicopter flight to travel to a distant jungle site in Indonesia.
He had traveled extensively before to a location where he had reported discovering significant silver deposits.
But this time, de Guzman not arrived.
Twenty moments into the trip, a back door on the left-hand part of the aircraft opened, and de Guzman had vanished and was buried in the dense foliage below.
De Guzman, who had been identified with hepatitis B and was exhausted from battling recurring Malaria, was announced by the CEO of the mining company as de Guzman had taken his own career.
The Calgary Herald sent American journalist Suzanne Wilton to De Guzman’s suicide ten years later.
” I was sent halfway around the world… This story has haunted me always since”, she says.
She is now making a new podcast line, which will examine what transpired prior to the terrible plane ride.
De Guzman was born in the Philippines on Valentine’s Day, 1956. An accurate day, as he was generally in love. He had three, maybe four, ladies all at the same time across various states.
De Guzman was a skilled geologist who believed he could succeed in Indonesia and enjoyed music, beer, band leagues, and wearing metal.
According to Wilton, the nation was viewed as a land of opportunity for silver miners in the 1990s because of its abundance of natural resources.
A distant site in Busang, in the province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, was thought to be a goldmine waiting to be exploited by one Dutchman, known as the” Indian Jones of researchers.” But he needed money to move forwards.
In April 1993, Felderhof struck a bargain with David Walsh, Bre- X Minerals’ CEO. Walsh intended to sell the dream of a page full of buried treasure to prospective buyers.
Felderhof, a brother scientist and friend de Guzman, was in charge of the research and made it clear he wanted a job partner to assist with the research.
But Felderhof, de Guzman and their team only had until 18 December 1993 to drilling check holes to see if the metal was really there. The Indonesian authorities granted them an inquiry license that expired at that time.
There was still no mark of gold with only two pits dug and a few days until the final deadline. The place had come to him in a dream, de Guzman claims, and then immediately told Walsh he knew the exact place they needed to drilling.
The team drilled a third hole to find gold exactly where de Guzman had pinpointed. A fourth hole added the possibility of discovering something even bigger.
The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam
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For the next three years, work at the site continued. As the number of investors increased, as did the estimates of the amount of gold that was present. The price of shares in Bre- X Minerals began to soar, from 20 cents to C$ 280 ( US$ 206, £163 ). The company was eventually valued at C$ 6bn ( US$ 4.4bn, £3.5bn ).
Many residents of Canadian small towns jumped into the gold rush and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their savings.
However, the shine started to fade as the years progressed.
In early 1997, Indonesia’s then- president, Suharto, ruled that a small company such as Bre- X Minerals could no longer solely own the site and reap its rewards. A larger, more knowledgeable mining company had to collaborate with the Indonesian government to assist it. So, a deal was struck with US company, Freeport- McMoRan.
Freeport- McMoRan had to carry out its own checks before agreeing to accept all the financial risks relating to the mining of precious metals. The Busang deposit’s twin holes were set up by its geologists. By drilling next to the location where it was discovered and taking rock samples, twinning is a way to double-check whether gold is present.
This was standard practice in mining, but had not been done so far by Bre- X Minerals.
No trace of gold was found in the twinning samples, which were sent off to two different labs.
What might this mean for those who had put their savings into use?
Freeport- McMoRan provided Walsh and Felderhof with information on the new data. They instructed de Guzman, who was at a convention in Toronto, to return to Busang to meet the Freeport- McMoRan team to explain.
De Guzman travelled from Canada via Singapore, where he spent time with his wife Genie, with whom he had a son and daughter.
Jennifer Wells, a different Canadian journalist, has since compiled his final hours.
She says de Guzman spent his last evening in the city of Balikpapan, more than 100 miles ( 161km ) south of the Busang mine, with Bre- X Minerals employee Rudy Vega.
Vega was a member of the company’s Filipino exploration team and was scheduled to travel with de Guzman to face Freeport-McMoRan.
The two of them later went to a karaoke bar, according to an account Vega would later give to Indonesian police. De Guzman attempted to commit suicide after going back to his hotel room, according to Vega.
The next morning, de Guzman and Vega travelled by helicopter to Samarinda, another city closer to Busang.
De Guzman then re-emerged the helicopter and headed to the mine, but Vega did not accompany him.
A maintenance technician and a pilot were with de Guzman on the flight. However, the pilot was an Indonesian air force pilot, not the typical one who made the trip to the Busang mine. The odd stop in Samarinda was also odd because de Guzman frequently flew straight from Balikpapan to Busang.
The pilot has rarely discussed the trip after making an initial statement at the time. However, Wilton claims he was unaware of what transpired and that he had no knowledge of what transpired.
By 10: 30 local time on 19 March 1997, de Guzman was dead.
Four days later, a body was discovered in the vast jungle, and handwritten suicide notes were discovered in the helicopter.
Six weeks after de Guzman’s death, the Busang gold dream was over for everyone, leaving investors in despair.
Bre- X Minerals ‘ C$ 6bn valuation had been reduced to nothing.
An independent report would confirm that the Busang site had no gold at all. Rock samples dating from 1995 to 1997 were analyzed and discovered to have been hacked through a technique known as salting. To defame the results, gold fragments from a different source were sprinkled on rock samples using a saltshaker.
Almost 30 years later, no- one has ever been held accountable for the scam.
Walsh maintained that he had no idea and that he had a stroke in 1998. A Canadian judge in 2007 determined Felderhof had been unaware of the swindle and found him not guilty of insider trading. The Dutch geologist passed away in 2019.
That brings us back to de Guzman. Had he committed suicide to avoid being forced to admit that he was the mastermind behind the deceit?
His suicide notes raise concerns, says Wilton.
For the podcast, a cousin, once removed, of Felderhof- Suzanne Felderhof- says he had expressed doubt over whether de Guzman could ever have written them.
The notes mention physical problems that, according to her, her relative had never heard him complain about.
Another suicide note, according to Wilton, was written to de Guzman, the finance manager for Bre-X Minerals. In it, one of de Guzman’s wives ‘ names had been spelt incorrectly.
After the autopsy reports were made public, Dr. Benito Molino was a member of the Filipino investigative team that de Guzman’s family had hired to look into the evidence.
Molino claims in the photos of the body found in the jungle that he saw bruises on the neck and that de Guzman had died by strangulation.
According to Molino, “he must have been thrown out of the helicopter in the jungle when he was dead to make it seem like he committed suicide.”
” In big crimes, there will always be a fall guy, so we do n’t believe that the real mastermind will be identified”.
Or was de Guzman’s body the same as de Guzman’s?
Based on initial descriptions, it would appear the individual had been dead for longer than four days- the time it took for the body to be discovered- says forensic anthropologist, Dr Richard Taduran, who worked with Molino.
Genie de Guzman’s wife claims that the body was found with intact teeth, but that her husband had false teeth. De Guzman’s dental records have never been released by his family, says Wilton.
Geologist Mansur Geiger, a friend of Genie de Guzman, claims that she had informed him that her husband was still alive and had escaped to South America. Geiger thinks he’s relocated to the Cayman Islands.
Could de Guzman have planned to pick up a corpse on the final flight in order to fabricate his own death? Did he even board the aircraft at all?
The son he shared with Genie believes that his father could still be alive, having been informed by his mother.
He is a geologist, like his father, and is determined to continue his father’s legacy- but this time in the right way.
” Maybe I could start my own mines”, says Michael de Guzman Jr.” Get some investors and… be the better Mike de Guzman”.
Listen to BBC Scotland Productions’ The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam podcast, which was produced for BBC World Service and CBC.