Six weeks after de Guzmán’s death, everyone’s dreams of Busan gold were dashed, leaving investors in despair.
Bre-X Minerals’ C$6 billion valuation has evaporated.
Independent reports confirm there is no gold at all at the Busan site. Analysis of rock samples from 1995 to 1997 revealed that they had been tampered with through a process called salting. Fragments of gold from other sources were sprinkled into the rock samples through salt shakers to falsify the results.
Nearly 30 years later, no one has been held accountable for the scam.
Walsh insisted he knew nothing about it and died of a stroke in 1998. The Dutch geologist died in 2019.
Which brings us back to de Guzman. Did he kill himself to avoid being exposed as the mastermind of the scam?
Wilton said his suicide note caused concern.
Regarding the podcast, one of Feldhoff’s distant cousins, Susanna Feldhoff, said he had doubts that de Guzmán could write them.
The notes, she said, mentioned physical ailments that her relatives had never heard him complain about.
Another suicide note was addressed to a Bre-X Minerals financial manager, whom de Guzman did not actually know, Wilton said. In one, the name of one of de Guzman’s wives was misspelled.
Dr. Benito Molino was part of a Philippine investigative team hired by de Guzman’s family to examine evidence after the autopsy report was released.
Molino said he saw bruises on his neck in photos of the body found in the jungle and concluded de Guzman had been strangled.
“When he died, he must have been thrown out of the helicopter in the jungle and it looked like he committed suicide,” Molino told the podcast.
“In major crimes there is always a scapegoat so we do not believe the real mastermind will be identified.”
Or could this body be that of de Guzmán?
Dr. Richard Taduran, a forensic anthropologist who worked with Molino, said that based on initial descriptions, the man appeared to have been dead for more than four days – the time it took for the body to be found.
De Guzman’s wife, Gini, also said that the teeth on the body found were intact, but her husband was wearing dentures. DeGuzman’s family has never released his dental records, Wilton said.
