[miningmx.com] – GOLD Fields acknowledged it was the subject of a regulatory investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in respect of an empowerment transaction related to its South Deep mine.
“Given the early stage of this investigation, it is not possible to estimate reliably what effect, the outcome this investigation, any regulatory findings and any related developments may have on the company,” it said in a statement.
Reuters reported that Gold Fields had not released the results of an independent investigation the gold producer commissioned earlier this year. This led to reports by the Mail & Guardian suggesting the report found the company to have bribed African National Congress chairperson, Baleka Mbete.
Mbete was a shareholder in Invictus Gold, an empowerment company that benefited from a R2.1bn deal in 2010 that the Mail & Guardian said consituted bribery citing a report by Paul Weiss, a US law firm.
In an interview with BDLive in March, Mamphela Ramphele, the former chairperson of Gold Fields said the South African government had insisted that certain partners be adopted in the empowerment of South Deep.
Gold Fields’ preference was for an employee share programme but in the end, it opted to partner with an empowerment entity called Invictus which ended up taking a 9% stake in South Deep, said BDLive.
Invictus is a profoundly broad-based empowerment company with some 73 shareholders of which only 18 have been publicly named. This has led to criticism that Gold Fields had been less than transparent.
Citing Ramphele, BDLive said: “The South African government had shoved the list of some of Invictus Gold’s black economic empowerment shareholders down Gold Fields’ throat, with an ultimatum that if the preferred names were not taken on board it would be denied a mining licence”.
Among those involved in the Invictus Gold deal are Mbete; African National Congress chairwoman; Limpho Hani, wife of late South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani; Jerome Brauns SC, who represented President Jacob Zuma during his rape trial; former Springbok Ashwin Willemse, and Mandla Msimang, son of party stalwarts Mendi Msimang and the late Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, BDLive said.
