La plus ça change…
This NR from yesterday evening made me laugh out loud. In it we hear that Columbus Gold (CGT.v) is getting the Mogollon silver property from Columbus Exploration (CLX.v) in lieu of a near $450k debt owed. Follow the bouncing ball, people:
- Back in 2007 CGT.v loaned some cash to CLX.v. The principle on the loan was paid back, but the interest wasn’t. That was about $300k at the time.
- Meanwhile, CGT does general accounting and book-keeping work for CLX.v and charges the smaller company $10k/month for the privilege. Nice work if you can get it.
- All this time, the Mogollon property is valued at a tad over $2m. At this time it was under an option deal to a company called Santa Fe Silver.
- Then in 2014 the deal with Santa Fe was changed and under the new deal, Santa Fe could buy Mogollon outright for a total of $1m cash ($50k down, then $950k cash by November 2014)
- Over at CLX.v, the people…errrr….doing the books in the company (see above) decide to write down Mogollon to $450k value in the September 2014 financials, giving their specific reason as the new deal with Santa Fe.
- (Did you get that? Agree to sell something for $1m and because of that state in your filings that it’s only worth $450,000? No, I have no idea either, must be the wonders of science or something).
- Then the Santa Fe option/purchase deal lapsed definitively.
- And now CLX.v swaps the property that was valued at over $2m less than a year ago for a sub-$450k debt that was accrued on loan interest and services provided by the very company that’s the new owner of the property.
And you may be shocked, shocked ah say!, to find out that the people running CGT.v are the same people who run CLX.v. Headed by a guy called Giustra. Now, where have I heard that name before? Darnit….where…tip of my tongue…just can’t seem to….
Another round of retail shareholder back passage love process and subsequent bleeding complete. Enjoy your Tuesday.