satan1, you know how it works, as well as I do. You've probably...

satan1, you know how it works, as well as I do. You've probably worked in the sector, in some form, like myself, up in West Perth, or down on The Terrace.

If you are right in with them, then you will have picked up shares at 6.5 cents, like most insiders, so well done to you if that is the case.

And I'm sure that you know as well as some do, that the gold miner fraternity in Perth is small, and consists of a group or mates (basically, when it's all said and done). Many of them live around the river in the rich leafy suburbs just beyond UWA, which was my old haunt, while some of the young bucks who are trying to break into the In-Crowd build mansions over in City Beach. I've been to both, but only as a guest, an observer, and on a couple of occasions, confidante.

On more than one occasion I have been invited to participate in a stitched up deal, as I'm sure you have. The old boy mining entrepreneur/geologists get together, with some broker mates, and lawyer mates (from Aquinas), and they decide to offer things like the 6.5 cent shares to insiders, and together they work out a system by which they all make a squillion. The system is old news, and tried and tested.

The interesting thing about listening to some of these conversations, was that it didn't actually matter what industry was involved, in fact, gold was simply a vehicle, but anything else could have done just as well, because the methodology (mode of scam - what I call the MOS) was the same.

I got invited to participate in a couple of these deals by some directors I was working with, who were 100% convinced I was in, but alas, I declined and moved on, but kept shtum, after all, it wasn't my business to interfere, and I didn't like their company.

I see that some of the CMM new boys have done a similar thing with another company recently, getting a large position at 80% less than the current share price.

So c'mon satan1, those of us who have worked down there with these type of mining barons know how it works mate, we've retired from it, but we're not fooled.

eshmun is just venting his frustrations, probably because he may not have been in the corporate part of this industry before, but either way, he's not far from the truth.

I still run into a couple of the characters I worked with on The Terrace from my mining days. They are wearing their $7,000 dollar suits still and having the company (somehow) pay for them, and eating at the most expensive restaurants around by the river most nights (paid by the company), and have the most expensive phones, and they drive the Porsche or Benz (leased by the company), and the wife usually gets her 5 star overseas holiday every year (wherever there is a convention, paid by the company), and so on. It's a total rort mate, there has never been any other word for it, as are so called performance bonuses for these guv'nors.

And one of my fellow retired friends was a broker just off The Terrace, and oh man, when we get a couple of drinks into him, the scams and convoluted dealings that all these mining tycoons pull at times is incredible to hear.

Nobody's fooled mate, least of all some of us who have been in that corporate clique for a while, call them what you like, the brotherhood, the mafia (perhaps gofia would be a better term - gold mafia), the old boy network, or simply the insiders.

Let's not be naive or vague about how all this works, or try and gloss over things for the newby's or the young. They deserve some truth, even if they won't or don't believe it yet (at least until they get older and have come to understand and experience it).

It's the way human society has worked for thousands of years.

Was CMM a stitch up - of course it was. I can hear the conversations now, like it was yesterday.
Is it still a stitch up - probably.

I own a few shares, but not much. It's just too smelly and grubby for me, and reminds me of a farm, after the muddy rains, with the animals snorting around a trough. In any fair society, they would be killed and served as bacon, but whoever said human society was fair !

Everyone should read Animal Farm - it's the corporate side of the gold mining industry 101.

Gw