BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwire - Feb. 19, 2013) -Intrepid Mines Limited (TSX:IAU)(ASX:IAU) (the "Company" or "Intrepid") releases a letter to shareholders.
Dear Fellow Shareholder
You may have seen recent press speculation that a group called Quantum Pacific Capital is contemplating trying to remove the entire Intrepid board.
Quantum Pacific, a Hong Kong hedge fund that is the registered holder of 1.2% percent of the Company, has not yet made any direct approach to the Company.
Your directors believe that Quantum Pacific is working with others, including Indonesian businessman Edwin Soeryadjaya, as part of a concerted plan to take control of your Company. If successful, the plan could strip further value from Intrepid shareholders, by neutralising our efforts to enforce our rights to Tujuh Bukit. We also believe that some of the parties associated with Quantum are the same people who engineered the unlawful transfer of Intrepid's 80 per cent interest in Tujuh Bukit to a vehicle that is part-owned by Edwin Soeryadjaya and Provident Capital.
Any attempt by Quantum Pacific to take control of Intrepid will be strongly resisted by the Board. We are fighting hard to restore the rights of all Intrepid shareholders and any action by Quantum Pacific will be seen by your directors as just another tactical distraction that we need to deal with as part of our fight to win back your legal entitlement to Tujuh Bukit.
Since June last year when we became aware that Intrepid's rights to the Tujuh Bukit project were compromised, your board and management team and our advisers have committed every available resource to devise and implement a strategy to achieve our simple objective of restoring value for shareholders. These include: •Partnering with Surya Paloh, a highly respected Indonesian businessman with extensive media and other business interests. Mr Paloh is providing strategic advice. Mr Paloh now owns 5% of Intrepid and we have an arrangement with him under which he is incentivised to help us achieve our goals.
•Retaining first tier international advisers including Ashurst in Australia and Singapore and SSEK in Indonesia as our legal counsel and Macquarie Capital as our financial adviser.
•Undertaking the work required to: ?prepare for International Arbitration proceedings in Singapore to seek redress for what we believe to be blatant breaches of our Alliance Agreement and related contracts, by our joint venture partners;
?commence proceedings in the Administrative Tribunal in Jakarta to challenge the purported transfer of IUP's from IMN and associated actions;
?initiate, at the appropriate time, civil proceedings in Indonesia against various parties for inducing breach of contract and other potential breaches of the Indonesian Corporations Code;
?reject what your board believes to be the baseless claim by Paul Willis (who is also believed to be working in concert with Edwin Soeryadjaya and whose long-term partner, Sam Garrett, is trying to place additional pressure on us by making a legal claim which your directors regard as spurious and without foundation); and
?assist the Indonesian police with their investigations into what Intrepid believes to be a clear case of fraud by our Indonesian partners.
As I am sure you will appreciate, your directors believe it would be damaging to your interests to make specific details of our legal strategy public. In the situation in which we find ourselves, the stakes are too high to make ill-considered or poorly timed disclosure about the specifics of our legal claims. We are clearly not going to provide the protagonists in this dispute with information that assists them.
What I can say at this time is that your directors remain confident that we have the ability and resources to fight hard to recover value for our shareholders, no matter how long it takes, and we will resist all attempts to destabilise those efforts.
In closing, let me say on behalf of all of your directors that we very much appreciate the support and patience you have afforded us as we deal with these complex issues. We look forward to rewarding your continuing support with a positive outcome and we will keep you informed as we move forward in the coming weeks and months.
Through their monthly acquisition of shares in lieu of directors' fees, your directors continue to show their confidence that an acceptable resolution will be reached.
In the meantime, should you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me or Brad Gordon.
Yours sincerely
Ian McMaster AM
Chairman
IAU Price at posting:
23.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)