In 2024 Anno Domini and with all the AML legislation yet the forensic accountants cannot get past the corporate veil? I wonder which tax office will assess the $5.9 Mil as income …
Probe Unable to ID Bank Account Owner in Endeavour CEO Case: FT
EY and Linklaters undertook a forensic accounting investigation to identify the holder of the bank account that de Montessus ordered $5.9mn to be transferred into but they were unable to discover the owner, the people said.Forensic accountants were unable to identify the owner of a bank account to which
Sébastien de Montessus , the former CEO of Endeavour Mining, instructed a $5.9m payment, the FT reports citing two people familiar with the matter.:
De Montessus has said the payment was made in 2021 to a known security company to provide services to protect partners and employees in a conflict zone, which people with knowledge of the situation confirmed was a reference to mines in Burkina Faso. De Montessus declined to provide the name of the company to the Financial Times.
Endeavour on Thursday said the payment was connected to one of its divestitures in recent years, which a BMO research note said was the Agbaou mine in Ivory Coast, sold in 2021.
The chief executive instructed the then-private Canadian gold company Allied Gold, which bought Agbaou, to transfer $5.9mn owed to Endeavour as part of the transaction to the supposed security company, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Allied Gold said it “received payment instructions in compliance with the obligations outlined in the purchase agreement” and payment was made in line with the instructions and agreement.
Norton Rose Fulbright was the law firm that advised Endeavour on the Agbaou transaction.
EY and Norton Rose Fulbright declined to comment. Linklaters did not respond to a request for comment.
De Montessus on Thursday said he had failed to notify the board of the arrangement but denied he benefited personally from the payment. He also criticised the short time he was given by the board to offer a defence.
A top-10 shareholder in Endeavour told the FT that if de Montessus was making a payment for security then “the minimum” he should have done was inform the chair or another board member.
“His answer was not satisfactory at all for the board,” the shareholder said.
De Montessus has previously come under fire for his high pay levels. He was the highest-earning FTSE 100 chief executive at £16.85mn in 2021, outstripping second-place Pascal Soriot, who earned £13.85mn for leading pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, a company with a market capitalisation more than 40 times larger than Endeavour.
The gold producer said that separately a complaint had been made by a whistleblower in October 2023 about de Montessus’s personal conduct with employees, an allegation he denies.
A spokesperson for de Montessus said: “An independent investigation by Linklaters did not uphold any of the personal conduct allegations. The inclusion of that allegation by Endeavour Mining in its RNS statement on Thursday was utterly misleading. The legal position is now being assessed.”
De Montessus’s departure leaves questions for Endeavour about the involvement and knowledge of other executives in the company of the irregular payment instruction.
Endeavour’s shares fell almost 7 per cent on Friday. Despite the appointment of mining veteran Ian Cockerill as chief executive, analysts at Berenberg said there was scope for it to become an M&A target.
La Mancha, Endeavour’s second-largest shareholder founded by Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris — who sits on the company’s board — on Friday said it recognised and respected the “challenging nature of the decision” to fire De Montessus but stood by it.
Senior Contributor
Bitcoin's mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto has received almost 26 bitcoin worth just over $1 million—more than 10 years after they disappeared.
A wallet created by Satoshi Nakamoto, the so-called Genesis wallet that was the first ever created on the bitcoin network, received the bitcoin—sparking speculation that the bitcoin creator had "woken up."
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"Either Satoshi woke up, bought 27 bitcoin from Binance, and deposited into their wallet, or someone just burned a million dollars," Conor Grogan, a director at bitcoin and crypto exchange Coinbase, posted to X alongside an Arkham Intelligence link showing the transaction.
Grogan added he thought it could be "some sort of weird ETF marketing scheme," referring to the closely-watched race by Wall Street giants including the world's largest asset manager BlackRock to bring a long-awaited spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) to market.
The latest transaction increased the value of the bitcoin held in the Genesis wallet, which initially held the 50 bitcoin created from the first bitcoin block and hasn't sent any bitcoin since Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared, to just under 100, worth around $4 million.
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MORE FROM FORBESU.S. Dollar 'Demise'-Iran And Russia Suddenly Abandon The Dollar As It Charts Worst Year Since 2020 Amid A $1.6 Trillion Bitcoin And Crypto Price BoomBy Billy Bambrough
The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, who disappeared in late 2010 after publishing bitcoin's white paper in 2008, has become the subject of fierce debate as the price of bitcoin has surged with the name linked to various coders, developers and so-called cyberpunks over the years.
If Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive—though it's not even known whether they are an individual or a group—they are thought to control over 1 million bitcoin, currently worth almost $50 billion, putting them in the top 25 world's richest people, according to Forbes estimates.
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