Majority Holder of Yuba Is Selling to Denver Firm
Bond International Gold of Denver is selling its two-thirds interest in the Yuba Goldfields mining operation near Marysville to WestGold of Denver, for $16 million and a royalty interest in the mine, the companies said Thursday.
One-third owner in the mining operation called Yuba Placer Gold is Yuba Natural Resources, a San Diego-based company whose former chairman, Richard Silberman, was arrested and indicted earlier this year on money-laundering charges.
Before his arrest in April, Silberman was a power in statewide Democratic politics and held a Cabinet post in then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s administration. His trial is scheduled to begin early next year in U. S. District Court in San Diego.
Yuba spokesman Marshall Mintz said the purchase by WestGold is a “positive event” but declined to comment further on the partnership’s plans for the mine.
The mine east of Marysville involves a giant dredge that digs ore from a river bed at depths of 100 feet or more and which refines the ore into ingots. The 9,000 acres of land on which the mine is situated is owned by Yuba Natural Resources, which assigned mining rights to Yuba Placer Gold in exchange for a one-third interest.
WestGold, short for Western Gold Exploration & Mining Co. Ltd., is a partnership of Inspiration Resources, a publicly traded natural-resources mining company based in New York, and Minorco of Luxembourg. WestGold’s properties include a mining project in Nome, Alaska, that accounted for about half the 67,000 ounces of gold that WestGold produced last year.
Improvement Predicted
Last year, Yuba Placer Gold extracted about 22,000 ounces of gold from the Marysville mine.
Douglas Foote, vice president of Bond International Gold, said Thursday that his company invested $3 million in improving the dredge, which will result in a “significant” increase in gold production this year.
Nevertheless, Bond is selling its interest in the Yuba mine because the mine did not fit in with its “general strategy of expanding our underground and open-pit operations,” Foote said.
The five other mines Bond operates, in North and South America, are either open-pit or underground. It also has interests in several mines in Australia.
Bond International Gold is a publicly traded company controlled by Australian investor Alan Bond.
