Interests in the Amazon, Siberia, Rocky Mountains, Africa, and more
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(IPS) SAN FRANCISCO -- In his search
for the proverbial pot of gold, Robert "Toxic Bob" Friedland has
followed the end of the rainbow to the heart of the Venezuelan Amazon,
the vast native grasslands of Siberia, high up in the Rocky Mountains,
and the Atlantic coast of southern Africa, to name just a few places.
Gold speculator extraordinaire Robert Friedland, a dual citizen of
Canada and the United States, acquired the nickname "Toxic Bob" in 1969
when he was busted for trying to sell 8,000 "hits" of the hallucinogenic
drug LSD to an undercover drug agent in Portland, Maine.
But it remains a fitting moniker.
Early last month, the U.S. Department of Justice lost a bid to seize
$152 million in Friedland's assets in order to pay for the clean-up of
cyanide and heavy metal contamination at a mine he financed and
developed in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado.
Contamination at the Summitville mine -- stemming from the use of
cyanide to extract gold from ore and resulting in the costliest mining
disaster ever in this country -- hasn't been Friedland's only encounter
with environmental woes.
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By the time dead hogs and fish werre floating down the river, Friedland had quietly vanished
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From Australia
to Zambia, he has done business in a long list of places in the past
decade, during which he amassed a personal fortune estimated at $600
million.
His first major international venture began in August 1990, when he
bought $2 million in debentures from South American Goldfields with the
understanding that the company would use half the money to explore for
gold on seven different concessions in Guyana.
In January 1993, one month after pulling out of Summitville, his
company Golden Star Resources finalized a joint venture with Cambior of
Montreal, Canada, to mine for gold near the Omai River, a tributary of
the Essequibo River, the main waterway in Guyana.
On August 19, 1995, the dam at the holding pond at the Omai gold mine
broke, spilling more than three billion liters of cyanide-laced waste
into the Omai River over a period of five days.
Miners reported dead hogs and fish floating down the Essequibo, but by
that time Friedland had quietly vanished. Golden Star Resources
officials said he had already sold his shares and had nothing to do with
the company any more.
Angry local people have joined together to prepare a lawsuit against
Cambior in Quebec that is expected to be filed this month.
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After environmental disasters in North and South America, Friedland is moving heavily into Asia
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At about
the same time he was making his investment in Guyana, Friedland was also promoting a company called Venezuelan Goldfields.
But Friedland's plans turned sour before the company could begin
digging for gold. Venezuelan environmental groups and politicians
publicly condemned his operations in Bolivar, while 5,000 indigenous
people mobilized to protest invasions of their land.
Friedland wrote off approximately $3 million for his Venezuelan
ventures in 1995, saying that there was not enough gold to justify
working in the country.
Friedland, who earned over $500 million in the recent sale of his stake
in a Canadian nickel mine, has now shifted most of his focus to Asia.
These venture are managed through myriad companies. His major corporate
entity is Ivanhoe Capital, a private company based in Vancouver that he
controls. His second most important holding is probably First Dynasty,
which started life in August 1994 in Calgary, Alberta, as a shell
company with a concession to prospect for gold in Dublin Gulch in the
Yukon.
First Dynasty moved its offices from Canada to Denver, Colorado, where
it still maintains an office before relocating its headquarters in
Singapore, shortly after Friedland himself moved to that city.
Although Friedland, who now lives in Sydney, Australia, owns only a
minority share in First Dynasty, the firm's North American operations
are now managed directly by Ivanhoe.
With the Yukon mine still under development, First Dynasty has acquired
a couple of cash cows to keep the money flowing. Most prominent are the
Gunung Pongkor gold mine in the western part of the Indonesian island
of Java, which produces 66,000 ounces of gold a year, and the Sembakung
oil field in the northeastern part of the Indonesian island of
Kalimantan, where 17 wells produce 4,500 barrels of oil a day.
First Dynasty also has several other concessions to explore for gold in
Java and in Kalimantan, next to the Busang deposit controlled by Bre-X
Minerals, the biggest gold find in recent decades.
In addition, First Dynasty developing three other major projects in
association with other Friedland companies, including a quarter of the
Vasilkovskoye Gold Mine in Kazakhstan. Another quarter of the Kazakh
mine is owned by Bakyrchik, a London-based company in which Friedland
has a 9-percent stake.
In Burma, First Dynasty plans to develop the Monywa copper mine through
Indochina Goldfields, a San Francisco-based company, which Friedland
controls through a 38.2 percent share. Indochina also has six
concessions to explore for metals in Burma that total 8400 square
kilometers.
Finally, First Dynasty has a memorandum of understanding to acquire 90
percent of the Setdco mining company, which has a 500- square-kilometer
concession in central New Guinea. The property adjoins the Freeport
McMoRan mine, the largest gold mine in the world.
Indochina Goldfields has controlling interests in Fiji's Emperor gold
mine and the Bong Mieu gold mine in Vietnam, and it has undertaken
several unspecified exploration projects in South Korea.
These, however, aren't the only ventures associated with Friedland.
This year, he has traveled frequently to Siberia, where he is
negotiating a deal through yet another company, the Alberta-based
Armada, to explore for gold in Chita in the southeastern corner of
Siberia.
Armada recently merged with Texas-based Nescor to take control of
Erdenet, a huge copper project in northern Mongolia. And in Zambia,
another Friedland subsidiary, African Minerals, is preparing to bid on
the privatization of the Konkolo copper mine.
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