Just six weeks after de Guzman’s death, everyone’s Busan gold dreams were over and investors were in despair.
Bre-X Minerals’ $6 billion valuation was reduced to zero.
An independent report will confirm that there is absolutely no gold at the Busan site. Analysis of rock samples from 1995 to 1997 revealed that they had been altered through a process called salinization. To falsify the results, gold flakes from other sources were sprinkled onto the rock samples via salt shakers.
Almost 30 years later, no one has been held accountable for the fraud.
Walsh claimed he knew nothing about it and died of a stroke in 1998. In 2007, a Canadian judge ruled that Felderhof had no knowledge of the fraud and acquitted him of insider trading. The Dutch geologist died in 2019.
That brings us back to de Guzman. Did he kill himself to avoid revealing that he was the mastermind behind the deception?
Wilton said his suicide note was raising concerns.
Felderhof’s cousin, Suzanne Felderhof, said on the podcast that she expressed doubts about whether de Guzman could have written the podcast.
The note mentioned physical ailments that she said her relatives had never heard him complain about.
Wilton said another suicide note was written to a Bre-X Minerals financial manager whom De Guzman did not actually know. In it, the name of one of Guzman’s wives was misstated.
Dr. Benito Molino was part of a Philippine investigative team hired by de Guzman’s family to examine evidence after the autopsy report was made public.
Molino said he concluded that Guzman had been strangled to death after seeing bruises on his neck in photos of the body found in the jungle.
“When he died, he must have been thrown out of a helicopter in the jungle to make it look like he committed suicide,” Molino told the podcast.
“We don’t believe the real mastermind will ever be revealed because in big crimes there’s always someone who goes down.”
Or was the body that of Guzman?
Initial accounts suggest the individual may have been dead for more than four days, about the time it took for the body to be discovered, said Dr. Richard Taduran, a forensic anthropologist who worked with Molino.
De Guzman’s wife, Genie, also said that although the teeth on the body were intact, her husband had dentures. Wilton said De Guzman’s dental records have never been released by his family.
