Bre-X geologist may not be dead: Report

The widow of Michael de Guzman, believed to have committed suicide in 1996 by jumping from a helicopter above the Indonesian jungle, has told a Singapore newspaper she believes the geologist at the centre of the Bre-X scandal may still be alive.

Genie de Guzman says she received a US$25,000 from Michael de Guzman, drawn from a Citibank branch in Brazil about three months ago, the Singapore Straits Times reported.

?Sometimes I think I'm in a movie,? Genie de Guzman, 42, told the newspaper. ?There has never been any closure. I never believed he was dead.?

The Straits Times said Genie de Guzman has not returned the newspaper's calls since the interview and refused to provide the bank document detailing the transaction in Brazil.

Bre-X Minerals Ltd. collapsed in late March 1997 after what was thought to be a massive gold deposit in the Indonesian jungle was exposed as a multibillion-dollar hoax.

The board of directors for the mining company was told the same day that de Guzman died and that assay results had come up empty of gold.

This March, almost eight years to the day after one of Canada's biggest corporate scandals broke, Bre-X former chief geologist John Felderhof, one of the men at the centre of the case, made his first appearance in court.

Felderhof has pleaded not guilty to eight charges of insider trading and misleading investors. He is accused by the Ontario Securities Commission of selling $84 million worth of Bre-X stock between April and October in 1996, while having information not disclosed to investors.

David Walsh, former CEO of Bre-X, died in June 1998 at age 52 from an apparent brain aneurysm. (*)