The Bre-X Fraud

By Andrew Willis and Douglas Goold

The history books will add the Bre-X saga to other legendary frauds like the South Sea Bubble. When the Bre-X bubble burst, the stock that had soared from fifty cents in 1994 to the equivalent of $286 in 1996 was worth nine cents in May 1997, before trading halted forever. And the Busang deposit, supposedly as much as 200 million ounces of gold, worth about $70 billion U.S. the biggest gold find in history was actually the century's biggest fraud. How did this happen, right under the noses of the financial world? In this book the experienced investigative team from The Globe and Mail's Report on Business that broke the story of Bre-X's troubles has combined forces to answer that question. With literally hundreds of Bre-X interviews behind them, and drawing on resources from several continents, they have been able to explain the twists and turns of this complex tale. The result is a fascinating true story that reads like the wildest fiction.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771033346
• ISBN13: 9780771033346
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Excellent

An excellent cautionary tale about sleaze, error, and blind faith. The Bre-X fiasco was perpetrated on people who should have known better, but it also hurt a lot of ordinary Joes. Ironically, Calgary, Toronto and on Wall St are the real villans here, not Indonesia. Even the Suharto family, famed for its corruption, can't keep up with the greed of Western mining promoters, elite underwriters, and savvy investors. Many people were ruined when Bre-X shot up 10,000 percent, and then tanked in a couple of hours. No one ever seems to learn, not after Keating, BCCI, Drexel Burnham, and Maxwell. Only those of us too poor to be in the stock market ever seem to see this coming. We can only ask ourselves "who's next?" in macabre anticipation.