I draw your attention to the company release of27 May 2021, authorised on behalf of the Board by Mr Burton, where 23 items were specified as “Additional Information Requested”. Current management then decided to add comments on each, with 11 items specified as “unexpected new request”. Further, one item was referred to as a “reasonable request”, implying that everything else the NT EPA sought was not reasonable.
In all the due diligence I have conducted on TNG, this document is unsurpassed in its commercial and cultural ineptitude.
The Chair of the NT EPA, Dr Paul Vogel, responded on29 May 2021, with an interview with the ABC. This was a highly unusual step, and served as the most public of rebukes against current management.
The language was strident: “furious”, “lashed”, “incorrect and potentially misleading”. He added: "I have never seen anything like it," and “I was mightily surprised to see the ASX announcement which lays the fault right at EPA's door — I totally reject that proposition”.
The resulting fallout was significant for Shareholders and for the project. The strategic pivot announced in September 2021 away from Darwin and to the mine site brings its own challenges.
It will require deep, ongoing and culturally sensitive engagement in the Northern Territory to address these challenges. This is what I will bring to the company.
Mr Burton and VangoldWhile the catalogue above is well known, most Shareholders will be unaware that Mr Burton was concurrently embroiled in a controversy in Vanuatu involving a gold and copper prospecting company.
The company is called Vangold Limited. It was incorporated in Vanuatu on 23 September 2020.
Vangold has only one shareholder, Mr John Benger.
Mr Burton was appointed as a director of Vangold on 22 December 2020. According to theVanuatu Financial Services Commission, and attached below, he is still a Director of the company.
Mr Benger also owns an exploration licence in the Northern Territory (EL31896), an area through which the proposed haulage path from Mount Peake runs. The relevant registry search is attached, along with a tenement map. In aFirst and Final reportheld by Geoscience NT, there is reference to “Calcite Marble to be used for the purpose of Acid Mitigation of the Mt. Peake Magnetite tailings”, (in reference to EL31699), along with “the advantage of being located alongside of the haul road from the Mt. Peake mine site to the rail line” (or EL31896, the exploration licence currently held by Mr Benger).
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