A Change of Guard

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Monday 10 September 2012

Angkor sees gold in Liberty

Monday, 10 September 2012
By Gregory Pellechi 
Phnom Penh Post
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Labourers work at a gold mine in Battambang province’s Phnom Proek district in April. Photograph: Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post
Angkor Gold Corp has acquired a new economic land concession as it gains full control of its other concessions with the purchase of another mining company, according to officials.

According to a statement released last week, Angkor Gold has purchased Liberty Mining International Pty Ltd (Liberty), an Australian firm which had sole control of the Andong Meas economic land concession in Rattanakiri province.

Liberty had been formerly owned by Interactive Industrial Solutions Inc.

The purchase comes as Liberty, which is two years into its exploratory licence, has had some “interesting results” from their surveys, according to Managing Director Richard Stanger.


“It’s going very successfully,” Stanger said as the company awaits further assays to return from the laboratory to prove their findings.

Proof enough for Angkor Gold President and CEO Mike Weeks is in the fact that Cambodians are already working the areas near Angkor Gold’s concessions.

“I have witnessed multiple locations with hundreds of artisanal workings, and these guys don’t work the land in this manner unless they are finding gold. This has been confirmed with recent assays,” he said in a statement.

The acquisition of Liberty along with the Andong Meas concession provides Angkor Gold with a total of five concessions operating under exploration licences in the northeast.

The Andong Meas concession along with the Oyadao concession, which are contiguous, “has had considerable exploration work completed. Aeromagnetic surveys and geological satellite imagery indicate numerous anomalies. Andong Meas is also known to have a rich history of artisanal mining which has earned it the local name which translates to ‘Well of Gold’,” according to the statement and is likely to produce results soon.

The work in northeastern Cambodia has been a “major program over the last two years, which is starting to show results,” Stanger said yesterday.

Though Liberty ownership has been transferred, it’s business as usual for Stanger.

“We’re concentrating on the licences we have and obviously looking other opportunities,” he continued.

According to Gold Investing News, Angkor Gold has spent over US$10 million in “aggressively exploring [Cambodia’s] mineral concessions over the past two and a half years”.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gregory Pellechi at gregory.pellechi@phnompenhpost.com

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