Life of mine obligations and provisions aren't fine print fluff....

Life of mine obligations and provisions aren't fine print fluff. They are fundamental to commodity contracts. If you sign a deal with a trucking company to haul your ore, or plant operators to crush it, or labour firms to staff it...they have to tool up and staff up, too. Getting a mine going isn't turning on a tap. Contractual obligations or at least restructure provisions in the event of major ore price fluctuations are a lifeblood of mining contracts. Without them no-one would dig a hole in the first place.

The essence of this claim is that the company chose to pay off loans (to related parties) rather than service contractors (now creditors) at a time when ore price was (notionally?) still high enough to cover ongoing contractual obligations but also - the liquidator claim implies/queries - at a time by which the directors should reasonably have been aware the company was in reality forward-trading insolvent: that is, the ore price was (reasonably) forecastable/falling significantly enough to recognise life-of-mine contractual implications ahead, yet the expeditious choice was made to (effectively) bail the lenders from a soon-to-be inviable proposition rather than pay contractors what they were (going to be) owed.

That's how I read it. Opinion only (in the absence of any useful detail at all - bad sign in itself). The three key questions shareholders should ask directors are:

1. What were the Termite life of mine contractual obligations/provisions, to which (now) creditors?

2. When were the Outback loans repaid and how much did this vary from the original loan contractual obligations?

3. Who made those loan repayment decisions and via what process?

The disingenuousness of the IMX response to the core of the claim - the company's wide-eyed response that 'cash reserves, ore stockpiles and the tenement itself' were enough to pay creditors at the time of liquidation - is to me mournfully instructive. Because it's totally contrived: obviously any such claim depends on what ore value you choose to use in the calculations: current, last quarter, reasonable going forward? The liquidator will ask the obvious question: if at the time of loan repayment management regarded going forward ore price as genuinely viable ('trade solvent', if you like), why pay off loans (unnecessarily?) ahead of schedule (?) with that 'ore price solvency' rather than service ongoing mine operation contracts? Presumably if they really regarded the mine as solvent-going-forward they would want to keep paying the guys running/provisioning it, right?

Thinking like a liquidator, and a mining contract/creditor. Anyone who reckons either mucks about with this stuff on a try-it-on whim - much less a tinfoil hat downramp conspiracy basis - has no business going anywhere near mining stocks.

So I'm done. This company has smelled for a while and long run out of benefits-of-doubt. It's one thing to piss money against a wall, sign stupid office leases, etc...but this is grown-up incompetence, rank financial maladministration. Or worse.

I honestly wish all diehards the best but no longer for me. It's a great pity because the tenement as others have said is a good one and its timing is right. Rightly or wrongly there's little hope of intermediary graphite deals until this is resolved, and they are what really count in a crowded, developing sector. Maybe some some time down the track a lucky neighbour will pick the scrub up for a song from another liquidator. Guess there could always be a massive gold hit tomorrow, too.

Good luck to those with optimism and stones enough to stay. I hope you get the last laugh on scarperers like me. If so you will have earned every bit of payoff multiple times over!