Mystery persists over de Guzman’s disappearance

Solid information on the disappearance of Michael de Guzman, project manager of Bre-X Minerals’ (BXM-T) Busang gold deposit, is still not available.

Guzman apparently committed suicide on March 18 by jumping from a chartered helicopter that was taking him from Balikpapan, Indonesia, to the Busang mine site in East Kalimantan. A body, thought to be de Guzman’s, was found on March 24 by an Indonesian army search team and taken to Samarinda, the capital, for an autopsy. But a Philippine consular official is reported to have said the body was impossible to identify.

At presstime, the Philippine embassy in Jakarta told The Northern Miner that the autopsy report had still not been released by Indonesian authorities. De Guzman’s brother was reported by the Reuters news agency as saying he thought it unlikely the geologist would have killed himself.