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Matthew McConaughey takes on Bre-X, but the real story behind Gold is crazier than fiction
Matthew McConaughey takes on Bre-X, but the real story behind Gold is crazier than fiction
It’s often been said that the story of Calgary’s Bre-X Minerals had all the makings of a Hollywood script: gold, love, betrayal and an enduring mystery.
Two decades after the stock-market darling was declared a colossal hoax, the mining firm’s amazing tale is finally getting the celluloid treatment — though loosely based on true events.
In Tinseltown’s take, called Gold, the producers swap in Reno, Nev., for Calgary, and Matthew McConaughey for stocky executive David Walsh.
But whatever embellishments the scriptwriters added, they needn’t have bothered.
The true story behind Bre-X — a $3-billion swindle that ruined countless lives — remains an epic tale of deceit, greed and ruin.
“A lot of people ended up losing a lot of money — their life savings, in many cases,” says Jaana Woiceshyn, assistant professor in strategy and global management at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business. “It was a spectacular fraud and a warning example for investors and anyone contemplating trying to become rich that way. In Canada, it remains probably the biggest business-related fraud we’ve seen.”
The Bre-X story is largely one of three men: charismatic promoter David Walsh, swashbuckling prospector John Felderhof and Michael de Guzman, a trusted geologist with a secret life.
Montreal-born Walsh went from high school to an investment desk at a small trust company. By 1982, he was making a six-figure salary as head of institutional equity sales for an Ontario brokerage, which transferred him to Calgary.
Eventually, he decided to strike out on his own, forming Bresea Resources. In 1989, Bre-X hit the capital markets and began trading on the Alberta Stock Exchange at 30 cents per share.
The junior exploration company scoured for gold in Quebec and took part in a diamond rush in the Northwest Territories, but the effort amounted to little. Now in his late 40s, Walsh was bankrupt and saddled with $60,000 in credit card debt.
But he was no quitter.
Looking for anything that could help his companies’ fortunes, Walsh contacted in 1993 an acquaintance he’d met 10 years earlier in Australia.
That man was John Felderhof.
Felderhof was a boy when his family moved to Canada from the Netherlands in the early 1950s. Athletic, bright and fearless, he gravitated toward geology in university. His taste for adventure eventually drew him to Africa, Australia and Asia.
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