[miningmx.com] — AURORA Empowerment Systems was given more time by the High Court in Pretoria on Friday to produce funding guarantees to buy the assets of financially stricken Pamodzi Gold, one of the liquidators said.
“The court has given them an extension until the 28th of February. By then, the guarantees are going to be issued by a Chinese company,” one of the joint liquidators, Enver Motala, told Sapa.
“By then we will finalise this deal.”
The judge had to decide on Friday if the final liquidation should go ahead or if Aurora should be given more time to produce funding guarantees.
Aurora, whose directors include Khulubuse Zuma, President Jacob Zuma’s nephew and Zondwa Mandela, former president Nelson Mandela’s grandson, is currently running Pamodzi Gold mine in Orkney and Springs, after making a bid to buy it in October 2009.
But since then, several possible deals have fallen through, mining had ground to a halt and many miners had not been paid since March this year.
Motala said the judge was given a letter from the bankers of the Chinese company on Friday to say that funding had been issued.
He said he could not name the company yet due to “their own stock exchange regulations”.
“We’ve been asked not to disclose their name.”
Aurora spokesperson Michael Hulley said he did not want to comment, and referred all queries to Motala.
“I think it would be inappropriate of me to comment,” said Hulley.
Motala confirmed a newspaper report earlier this week that some of the workers at Aurora’s Grootvlei mine had started receiving salaries after nine months of no pay.
He claimed that Khulubuse Zuma had paid the money out of his own pocket.
“The money that was paid over to the workers was from Mr Zuma, from his pocket. He paid it over to the liquidators and the liquidators paid it over to the department of labour,” said Motala.
He said more money was on its way to the workers, but did not say how much.
The mine is said to owe about 5,500 workers an estimated R15m in outstanding salaries.
Trade unions whose members are employed by Aurora said they were opposed to the company getting any further extension from the court.
“All they’re doing is extending the pain,” said Solidarity deputy general secretary Gideon du Plessis.
National Union of Mineworkers spokesperson Lesiba Seshoka also said the union would be “totally opposed” to an extension.
Pamodzi Gold mine ran into financial difficulties in 2008 already, and, since then, several funding possibilities had fallen through.
Funders initially mentioned included a Malaysian funder AM Equity, which failed to materialise, then followed a North American private equity fund, who would allegedly have pushed 100m into the mine, and, more recently, the Swiss funder GEM apparently agreed to release R50m of its pledged R750m to the liquidator by end-September.
