Wife says missing Bre-X gold geologist alive

Wife says missing Bre-X gold geologist alive

Agence France-Presse, Singapore

The wife of a missing Filipino geologist involved in one of the biggest scams in mining history says he is alive and has twice sent her money since vanishing eight years ago, a report said in Singapore on Monday.

In an article in Singapore's Straits Times, the Indonesian wife of Michael "Mike" de Guzman was quoted as saying her husband phoned their Jakarta home in April 1997 -- six weeks after he allegedly jumped to his death from a helicopter in remote East Kalimantan as the Bre-X scandal unraveled.

Genie de Guzman, breaking her silence for the first time since the scandal, said their elderly maid nearly dropped the telephone when she heard the geologist's familiar voice, the report said.

"Mike said it was just after dawn where he was and that he had just woken up," de Guzman told Jakarta-based Straits Times senior writer John Mcbeth.

The geologist told the maid to inform Genie to check her Citibank account, and when she did, she found US$200,000 in it, the report said.

"I realized that although he was still alive, I had to live my own life," said de Guzman, a member of the Dayak ethnic group in Kalimantan where her husband's Canadian firm Bre-X Minerals claimed to have found billions of dollars' worth of gold deposits at the Busang mine.

Bre-X shares became stock-market favorites, rising to a peak of $238 each on the Toronto Stock Market and turning company executives into wealthy men until gold samples were found to have been faked by the geologist.

After he vanished, a body torn by wild pigs was found in Kalimantan and officially identified as Michael de Guzman's, but his death remains the stuff of corporate and political intrigue in Indonesia.

Genie said she heard nothing from her husband again until this year when she received a faxed notice apparently from Brazil that $25,000 had been deposited into the same Citibank account on Feb. 14, Valentine's Day.

"There's a feeling I have that he's been communicating with me. My job has been to look after the children," she said, referring to their now 18-year-old daughter Paula and son Michael Junior, eight.

In the interview, de Guzman claimed her husband was summoned to the Indonesian presidential palace in 1996 by the dictator Soeharto, who was overthrown in 1998, and his tycoon friend, Muhammad "Bob" Hasan, who eventually served time in jail for corruption after the leader's ouster.

"After that he realized he had a big problem on his hands. Essentially, they wanted to take over the mine. He had the impression they wanted it for free," she was quoted as saying.

She said a female Indonesian military officer visited her after her husband vanished and told her to shun the press "for the good of the country" and for her family's sake, the report said.

Genie de Guzman believes her husband will soon emerge from hiding.

"I have a feeling that in a few months he will," she was quoted as saying. "The longest any secret should be kept is eight years."