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 | Wed, 29 Nov 2006 |
Posted: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 [miningmx.com] -- FORMER DRDGOLD financial director, Charles Mostert, clearly likes South Africa’s diamond sector judging by his latest venture – Nare Diamonds – which was unveiled at the Africa Down Under conference being held in Perth. Nare is to be listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) later this year and will subsequently establish a dual listing on the JSE to cater for the requirements of its black economic empowerment partners. This is Mostert’s second venture into diamond mining in South Africa since he first moved to Perth in 1998 when working for DRDGOLD. He subsequently became embroiled in the legal fall-out between DRDGOLD chairman, Mark Wellesley-Wood, and the Kebble family over a series of deals which went badly wrong in Australia, in particular the Rawas transaction. Mostert says those actions are on-going but have no effect on his business activities. “They have four civil actions pending against me. I have one counter action pending against them. The latest is they offered to go to mediation in November. I have refused. There is nothing to mediate. My attitude is I will see them in court if they ever get around to bringing the matter to court. “This thing has been dragging on for six years now. Just how long does it take to get a court date?” Mostert asked while being interviewed on the sidelines of the conference. Mostert’s initial foray back into South Africa was to form Crown Diamonds which was ASX-listed and controlled three small diamond mines in South Africa. He sold that last year to AIM-listed Petra Diamonds. Mostert has now bought control of four diamond assets that belonged to Tiego Moseneke’s NDC group - the Schimdtsdrift alluvial diamond mine, the Kamfersdam kimberlite mine – which was closed in 1907 - and associated tailings dumps, the Groen River exploration project and 20% of the Klipspringer joint venture which is controlled by Canadian diamond junior Southern Era which holds 57%. Southern Era announced this week that it was restarting trial mining at the Klipspringer mine following the drop in value of the rand against the US dollar. The Klipspringer mine started production in 2002 but shut down in 2004 because the then strength of the rand against the dollar made its operations economically not viable. The NDC originally got these diamond assets from De Beers through one of the first BEE deals that the diamond group entered into.Free news alerts: click here to subscribe
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