Youcef Yousfi prevents the financing for the “Australian Company of Gold Mines”

The Minister of Energy and Mines Youcef Yousfi asked the Australian Gold Mining Company which operate at the level of Algerian gold mines in the region of Tirak and Omasmasa, south of Tamenrasset, to hold a general assembly of its council on October 9, 2011 in Algiers for a final disposition of a partnership between foreign partners and Sonatrach which represents Algeria with 48% of the capital.

The company’s shares have completely collapsed in London Stock Exchange due to lower gold production in the mines of Tamenrasset to less than 22 kg per month by end of 2010, as the production did not exceed 11 kg a month on last august, the amount that arrived to Algiers a few days ago.

Shares of the company have been traded months ago in London, prompting Australian and Egyptian partners to apply for new funding to Sonatrach management in an attempt to remove the company off the hook after the produced quantities became insufficient to cover the proceeds and ensure the wages of 600 workers after the Bank of Algeria received orders to prohibit the continuing insurance of wages with the end of 2011.

Youcef Yousfi decided to reopen the file of exploiting gold mines in Tamenrasset (south of Algeria) after the directorate of mines at the ministry noticed an unexpected decline in the volume of monthly production of the Egyptian and Australian partners who have received a loan from the Bank of Algeria worth $67 million under the pretext of developing the company, before it is shown that their production in 2002 was 100% owned by the Algerian government through the Bank of Algeria ,Sonatrach, the National Company of Mines, the Algerian Company of Insurance, the Company of Managing the State Contributions in Mines,  and the Company of Transforming Precious Metals, was better 10 times than its current production after the former Minister of Mines and Energy Chakib Khelil offered it as a gift to Australians who admitted that they did not discover any new gram of gold after conducting a new study by the Australian geologist Phil Phyllis , at the request of the company’s administrative council which ordered a detailed and independent review to reserves of Tirak and Amesmassa in the framework of a concession of exploitation that ends by 2012.