Nectar38
Your comment on the Land Owner Agreement is very insightful if not a little understated.
Over 2009, with Madison (former holders of Mt Kare) in liquidation due the WFC, this project was really a complete and utter mess, way beyond the usual adjectives.
There were literally scores of land owner groups fighting with each other, endless litigation in the courts in Port Morseby, gun fights, you name it.
And behind that were the other “usual low life carpet bagger suspects” creeping around the place attempting to sow the seeds of disaffection and disunity for those who went through the proper processes under the Mining Act to enquire and acquire transfer and renewal of the Kare Project so as to progress it and realize its REAL potential.
At one stage in 2009 a certain faction of the Kare land owners, having done a deal with a shady business man, stormed the Mineral Resources Authority in Morseby and attacked staff there.
It was utter madness.
Honestly, you could have written a book on it, Andy Flowers did!
Anyone who is a serious investor in IDC should read Andy’s book
http://www.mountkaregoldrush.com/
The government of PNG had given up by early 2010!
They wanted to quarantine the ground within EL1093 where Kare simply to avoid the utter nightmare the project had become.
Here below an extract from Andi’s book on the early days of the Kare Project.
BTW, Steve Promnitz saw all of this happening, he was there when the dug the toilet pit!
“………………………It started in late 1987, when CRA geologists from CRA - Conzinc Riotinto of Australia - were digging a toilet hole for their camp at Mount Kare, in the PNG Highlands.
They struck gold.
They’d found traces in the creeks before, but now they’d found nuggets.
Word got out, and in January 1988 thousands of miners rushed to the new El Dorado.
Andi had been in joint ventures with the people of the area since 1968, running stores.
They trusted him, and the landowners of the discovery area asked him to help them negotiate equity participation with CRA.
The landowners came from several different traditional groups, which were more often enemies than friends.
Andi spent three years helping them to form a single representative body – Kare-Puga Development Corporation (KDC) – of which he was made Secretary.
For the landowners represented by KDC the prize would be 49 per cent of an alluvial gold mine at Mount Kare. It was, literally, a golden opportunity.
The first attempts to hijack it came from PNG politicians and a collection of foreigners and shady opportunists, determined to cash in on whatever was going, and if possible take it over.
Their combined attacks were unrelenting over nearly five years.
PNG elections were due in 1992. Prime Minister Rabbie Namaliu’s Pangu Government was challenged by the Opposition People’s Democratic Movement, led by Paias Wingti.
In January 1992 the Mount Kare mining camp was attacked and destroyed by what the newspapers called ‘terrorists’.
There was speculation that one motive was to enhance the chances of the Opposition by causing political instability before the elections – a tried and tested campaign tactic in PNG.
There were claims that Paias Wingti’s political campaign was partly funded by West Australian mining interests, and one prominent politician later alleged, under Parliamentary privilege, that Paias Wingti and an Australian entrepreneur called Denis Reinhardt had funded the attack.
This was never proven or repeated.
Denis Reinhardt was an old university friend of Wingti’s, and their student politics were slightly pinker than Elton John.
Reinhardt had dropped out of university, become a journalist, and then a failed mining entrepreneur. An Australian bank was after him for $11.11 million dollars.
He turned up in PNG two weeks after the attack on the Mount Kare camp, visiting a mining and a petroleum project with Wingti and a group of Mount Kare ‘landowners’, and soon became Wingti’s key advisor.
Backed by Perth mining juniors Ramsgate Resources and Menzies Gold and working with Warner Shand Lawyers of Port Moresby, Reinhardt and a group of dissident landowners tried to challenge CRA’s rights, seize control of KDC, and take over the lucrative Mount Kare project.
CRA, Andi Flower and the core KDC Directors very naturally resisted, and a series of battles ensued, inside and outside the courts.
The stakes were high, and the game got dirty.
After the July 1992 elections Wingti became Prime Minister, heading an uneasy coalition and attacking the country’s resource developers.
In PNG, Prime Ministers are immune from votes of no confidence for 18 months after their election. In 1993 a threatened Wingti sought to buy 18 months security.
He suddenly resigned as Prime Minister, and was immediately re-elected by a surprised Parliament.
The Supreme Court subsequently disallowed Wingti’s strategy, and the Prime Minister’s position was open.
Parliament voted, and Sir Julius Chan became Prime Minister. Chan didn’t have much time for Wingti’s old friend Reinhardt, and questions were asked about his role.
In December Reinhardt was ordered to leave the country.
Soon after this he surfaced in the Solomon Islands, this time backed by the Australian law firm Slater & Gordon, affiliating himself with dissident landowners at Ross Mining’s Gold Ridge project and demanding a slice of the action.
It all seemed very familiar……………………………..”
Bu 2009 the Mt Kare Project regarded as “impossible” the PNG ministers believed that the land owner issues at Mt Kare were insurmountable.
When the project went into liquidation in 2009 every carpet bagger from every sewer in the southern hemisphere and their dogs were buzzing around inciting instability, making promises to land owners they could not discharge, offering all sorts of inducements to all sorts of people, and for the sole purpose of attempting to manipulate that regional tensions and instability to get their hands on the prize.
The gold.
But only IDC and its management and their workers and consultants, following the path of at the fundamental level
Many had tried; all failed save, in the main because no one understood the fundamentals of what was required to unite the land owners in a common focus.
So it was that right from the outset representatives and consultants within the IDC camp were engaged to sort the land owner matters out in total finality, transparently, and with absolute deference to the myriad of issues that plagued the project.
Ultimately this involved nearly 300 separate meetings with land owners.
Readers can appreciate against this backdrop that IDC’s "land owner study" and any attendant agreement (of all agreements and process that the company has to complete) prior to grant of a mining lease, is by far THE most important milestone for this project.
I most respectfully take my hat off to Steve Promnizt and George Niumataiwalu, what they have done over the last 24 months in the reversal and fortunes of this project is nothing short of profound.
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