Friday, January 30, 2015

Are the Mahdia Gold Posts Getting Old Yet?

I'm sure they are, but this company is just so fun to kick around the mud..they make it so easy.

That being said, I should clarify that I was once invested in the company as I felt that there was actually a project there. Unfortunately, as I have outlined in some depth before, the company is run by the likes of those who prefer to scam a bit of money out of retail investors then put in some honest work and develop a project. It was a good lesson and digging deeper into the past of some of these guys hiding out on venture/CNSX.

Now, the issue with Mahdia gold has always been its inability to spend the money they raise, something that a few years ago they did in no small amount (even getting Mike Wekerle to drop in 4 mill), on anything actually meaningful. Its been over 5 years now and with over 14 million raised in this course of time, not even a lousy 43-101 report. As I'm sure most would assume, the vast majority has gone to management costs, with Zaakir himself having years where his salary as CEO was close to a million.

I imagine that the end of Mahdia's time with the Omai property is coming to an end. In 2011 they entered into an agreement with the government of Guyana for a prospecting license. In January 2012 they were "officially"awarded the license and details of the agreement were released; the company was the pay an overal sum on $11,500,000 to the Government of Guyana Mines Commission (GGMC). So..go back a few months when the payment was due. The GGMC comes knocking saying they have not made agreed upon payments. Zaakir negotiates and extension, the terms of which were released on December 9th 2014. The terms of the extension state that they have until November 16 2015 to have the ten million paid off...in installments...the first of which is to be made March 15th 2015.

So...in a month and a half's time the company will have 9 months to pay off $10,000,000, assuming they are able to make the first payment come March 15th. The news releases do not state the exact structure of the payments; likely they do not want to scare of any dummys left who think this might be a good thing. Oh...and as per the last financials, the company had 67k cash in the kitty.

Managment "scoured the very difficult and trying financial markets" (their words not mine) for months and the best they could come up with an alluvial gold JV with a local "mining" company. The pictures on their website show just how small time their operation is. Of course, Zaakir has his hand in this company (there is now actually 2 JVs in place...). The company has cited thievery from the projects as reason for the consistantly dissapointing numbers. The highest yield yet was 118.5 ounces. The Mahdia stake in the two joint ventures is 25% and 50%. Needless the say..not a lot of money ending up in the Mahdia bank account.

I'll be paying attention to the March 15th date to see if they end up making a payment or if they defualt. I bet on default.


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