Bre-X: Gold Today, Gone Tomorrow, Anatomy of the Busang Swindle

by Vivian Danielson, James Whyte

Book by Vivian Danielson, James Whyte

Genres: Geology

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book that I couldn't put down. It reads like a great mystery thriller, complete with its own murder mystery and the greatest heist in history. Tells the story of the Bre-x fraud of the mid 90s, where they grew the resource from a couple million oz gold to 200,000 million oz hold in a matter of two years! If that wasn't a red flag, you wouldn't see the multiple other crimson banners flying either and you'd be in on losing a piece of the 6 billion dollars that were swindled out of investors and tucked away in the Cayman Islands. Every bit of this is filled with the unbelievable, and yet it all happened. A great cautionary tale, a great essay on the nature of man- his greed, his blind willingness to follow into a mass hysteria despite his better judgment. A wonderful look into the whys and wherefores of sample prep and resource modeling, and how a mine is proved up, or ought to be at any rate.

[Scott Rochon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading for the Canadian mining industry to be reminded of our past. The Northern Miner writers did a great job synthesizing the story and pulling all the pieces together.