Letseng mine not for sale

JCI has decided not to sell the Letseng Diamond mine in Lesotho after a lengthy tender process since none of the offers were acceptable. The sale of the mine had already been restricted to a shortlist of bidders but management at JCI, part owner of Letseng, has decided it would be better off keeping the asset. �The JCI board decided it was more attractive to hold on to Letseng,� says Gibson, Spokes person for JCI.

However JCI has denied that the mine is for sale. JCI was rescued from near bankruptcy by Investec, a South African financial institution, around September last year, after it had put its own and Matodzi Resources�s stakes in Letseng up for sale. The mine was valued at around 2 billion rand by certain Matodzi officials earlier in 2005, but prospective bidders later claimed that it would not fetch more than 500 million rand. JCI will take a 57% stake in Matodzi through the conversion of preference shares that it owns in the company. And Matodzi now beneficially holds 50% of the issued share capital of Letseng Investment Holdings South Africa (Pty) Limited, which owns 76% of Letseng.

The Lesotho government owns the other 24% of the mine. Following the ousting of Brett Kebble, the new management at JCI has gone about making sense of the company�s complicated financial history. The results have been delayed a number of times with the most recent update claiming that evidence of misappropriation had been discovered.