Trial of Bre-X's Felderhof to resume Dec

The long-delayed trial of former Bre-X Minerals Ltd.'s chief geologist John Felderhof will resume on Dec. 6, CBC News reported Monday.

But after two weeks of hearings, it's expected to adjourn until later February, 2005, when the court will sit until May.

Lawyers for Felderhof and the Ontario Securities Commission were in a Toronto court Monday morning to set a new date for the case.

When Felderhof's trial originally began in 2000 he pleaded not guilty to eight charges of insider trading and misleading investors. The OSC alleged Felderhof sold $84 million worth of Bre-X stock in 1996 while he knew information not disclosed to investors about Bre-X's gold deposit in Indonesia.

When the trial began, Felderhof did not show up in court; he was thought to be at his home in the Cayman Islands.

After 70 days of hearings, the OSC then tried to get Justice Peter Hryn removed from the trial, charging he had made errors and issued unfair rulings.

In December 2003, the Ontario Court of Appeal threw out the attempt by the OSC to get a new judge appointed to the case. The appeals court said there was no reason to remove Hryn.

The Bre-X saga is one of the most notorious in Canadian corporate history. Calgary-based Bre-X was a shining star of the stock market from 1995 to 1997. The company claimed that it had discovered the world's largest gold deposit in Busang, Indonesia. But by the spring of 1997, new tests from the site came up empty.

The original positive assay results were produced by "salting" ? inserting gold from other sources into the samples. No one was ever charged with the fraud.

The company's geologist, Michael de Guzman, died mysteriously in March, 1997, when he fell from a helicopter into the Indonesian jungle.

In 1998, president David Walsh suffered a brain aneurysm at his home in the Bahamas and died.

The stock, which had been worth more than $200 a share, became worthless.(*)