Six weeks after de Guzman’s death, the Busang gold dream ended for everyone, leaving investors in despair.
Bre-X Minerals’ $6 billion valuation has dropped to nothing.
An independent report will confirm that there is no gold at all at the Busang site. Rock samples dating from 1995 to 1997 were analyzed and found to have been tampered with through a process called salting. Gold flakes from another source were sprinkled into the rock samples through a salt shaker to distort the results.
Nearly 30 years later, no one has been held accountable for this fraud.
Walsh claimed he knew nothing about the fraud and died of a stroke in 1998. In 2007, a Canadian judge ruled that Felderhof had no knowledge of the fraud and found him not guilty of trading crimes insider. The Dutch geologist passed away in 2019
That brings us back to de Guzman. Did he commit suicide to avoid having to reveal that he was the mastermind of the deception?
His suicide notes raise concerns, Wilton said.
As for the podcast, a cousin, once removed, of Felderhof – Suzanne Felderhof – said that he had expressed doubts about whether de Guzman could have written them.
These notes mentioned physical ailments that, according to her, her relatives had never heard him complain about.
Another suicide note was written to a Bre-X Minerals chief financial officer without de Guzman’s actual knowledge, Wilton said. In it, the name of one of de Guzman’s wives was misspelled.
Dr. Benito Molino was part of the Filipino investigative team hired by the de Guzman family to examine evidence after the autopsy report was released.
In photos of the body found in the woods, Molino said he saw bruises on the neck and concluded de Guzman died from strangulation.
“When he died, he must have been thrown out of the helicopter in the woods so it looked like he committed suicide,” Molino told the podcast.
“In big cases there are always people who fall, so we do not believe we will be able to identify the real mastermind.”
Or was the body even that of de Guzman?
Based on initial descriptions, it appeared the individual had been dead for more than four days — the time it took to find the body — said forensic anthropologist Dr. Richard Taduran, who worked with Molino.
De Guzman’s wife, Genie, also said that the teeth on the body found were still intact, but her husband had dentures. Wilton said De Guzman’s dental records were never released by his family.
