The money went to pay bills, ~2 million a quarter for gold stream, pay down most of the 15 million Real debt left by MP, pay redundancy for the workers to downsize, some of whom were on over 200 K US, Pay for exploration, pay for day to day running costs, pay for the upkeep of the tenements, pay legal costs, pay for the Australian arm, pay permitting and licencing. Insurance, PPE, meals for the workers and on and on the list goes. Mining is a very expensive enterprise, even on the small scale they were running. As an example, a boom arch hose on a 5500 will set you back ~2 k AUD, the machine has eight of them alone. The company I work for supplies hose services to mines, one mine alone runs up a bill of over 2 M a year, just in hoses. The administrator has been over the books, no problems, the books in Brazil have been audited, no problem since MP's moved on. All these people are very competent and spent considerable amounts of time going over everything. Unfortunately, when cash is short, management needs to make what might seem strange decisions on where to direct the cash on hand. While it might be beyond belief looking from the outside to let your mining equipment fall into disrepair, but when you have wages to pay, suppliers threatening to cutting of fuel ect unless you pay something, gold stream to pay of they will close you down and take everything, the importance of fixing the gear comes in well down the list. It looks easy from the outside, but the reality is very different... So that is where the money went, bills...
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