In today’s edition of El Dia, Monday 25 March, mining engineer Osiris de Leon gives his explanation for Barrick Pueblo Viejo’s reasons for making shipments and stating in the Single Customs Declaration that the metals were produced in the United States and not the Dominican Republic. He gives his explanation for why the content of the shipments is dore, and why the company is not specifying the content of the metals, whether gold, silver or others.
“Maybe only a few Dominicans know that Barrick Gold operates 13 gold mines in the United States and if Dominican gold is exported to Canada as if it originated in the United States, they are overestimating the production of their mines in the USA while underestimating Dominican gold production and for the purpose of recovering their overinflated Dominican investment, to reach their return of 10% and to pay the Dominican government its 28.75% of the share of the net profits, that gold does not count, because officially it never was produced here because it was never exported as originating in the Dominican Republic and that way Barrick would never have to pay for that gold,” he writes.
The Dominican public was made aware of this irregularity when Customs officers stopped an export shipment at Las Americas International Airport.
De Leon says that the Cotui metallurgical plant has been operating at full capacity since the last quarter of 2012 and has the capacity to produce up to six grams of gold per ton of ground sulphur ore. He says that Barrick is playing tricks.
“The first part of the trick is when the company exports four grams of gold/ton but reports two grams of gold per ton and cheats the government daily with 1,4000 pounds of gold exports to Canada reportedly produced in the United States, which at current prices would be worth some US$850 million a year without the owner of the undeclared gold receiving anything,” he writes.
He says that the second part of the trick takes place “when Barrick publicly announces that in its early years it will produce about 625,000 ounces of gold a year when it actually is going to produce more than one million ounces of gold a year, but the numbers add up, the difference has to be exported as originating in its mines in the US and that gold production does not enter the Dominican accounting. So in the cargo manifest of dore the United States is the country of origin, which has hitherto enjoyed the complicity of Customs personnel.”
He also says that the third part of the trick is the use of the word dore in the cargo manifest since dore is a generic term for any alloy of gold and silver, but without specifying how much gold and how much silver. This allows Barrick to play with the quantities of gold and silver placed in each shipment at their discretion and to report whatever they want to the government because while the price of gold is now at US$1,600/ounce, silver is trading at US$29/ounce. Gold currently costs 55 times more than silver, and so much of each shipment is exported expensive gold that is disguised as cheap silver.
De Leon says that unfortunately the Customs Department cannot verify how much gold and how much silver is exported, but it can contract the studies to national and foreign entities.
De Leon says that the halting of the twentieth shipment was not random; it was the result of a Presidential order to exert pressure on the company and oblige it to recognize a contract that produces 97% of the reported benefits for them and 3% to Dominican state, but this led to the disclosure that they are declaring only half of what is being produced, and that way the Indians of Quisqueya are again being tricked by the colonizers who 500 years later have come to look for gold.
On the other hand, El Caribe reports that on Friday, 22 March the Department of Customs reported that the value of the twenty-first shipment of 16 bars of metal weighing 1,670 kilograms packaged in four pallets is US$19,890,283.47. The Dominican Republic is listed as the country of origin of the export in the cargo manifest. The twenty-first shipment contrasts with the previously inspected twentieth shipment of the same 16 bars of metal in four pallets that was reported at a value of US$11.6 million.
www.eldia.com.do/columnas/2013/3/18/109649/print
www.elcaribe.com.do/2013/03/23/aduanas-autoriza-embarque-oro-plata-barrick