Diksha Sundriyal
Starring Matthew McConaughey in the lead role, ‘Gold’ follows the story of Kenny Wells, who runs a mining company called Washoe. The business has been in his family for generations, so when it is on the verge of dying, Kenny becomes desperate to try anything to breathe life back into it. He finds the solution in a gold mine in Indonesia based on the theories of a geologist called Michael Acosta. After months of pouring money into the business and almost losing his life in the process, Kenny is told that they have struck gold, and that’s when things change. The company shoots up and becomes a billion-dollar endeavor. But the fall is just as spectacular. The 2016 film presents a compelling tale but brings its own twist to the lead character.
Kenny Wells is a Fictional Rendering of Bre-X CEO David Walsh
‘Gold’ is inspired by the true story of the scam that the mining company Bre-X was involved in. The character of Kenny Wells is based on the company’s CEO, David Walsh. However, several changes have been made to the story and the character. Unlike Kenny, who is American, Walsh was a Canadian businessman, and venturing into gold mines in Indonesia was something that he was enticed into rather than diving headfirst into it himself. Before that, he worked for a small trust company and then for an Ontario brokerage firm. His history in stock brokering and portfolio managing allowed him to start his own business.
In 1989, Walsh set up Bre-X and worked out of his basement for a while. Eventually, it started trading on the Alberta Stock Exchange at 30 cents per share. The company was involved in mining for gold and diamonds, but it didn’t succeed, and it ultimately landed him bankrupt with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. In 1993, a turn in his luck arrived in the form of John Felderhof, whom Walsh had met about a decade ago. Felderhof and fellow geologist Michael de Guzman convinced him to invest in a mine near the Busang River in Borneo, Indonesia, that was to deliver more gold than anyone could ever have imagined.
David Walsh Played a Major Role in Luring Investors for Bre-X
Walsh started with an investment of about eighty thousand dollars, but his main job was to attract other investors, and he seemed to be pretty good at it. He sold the story of the gold (which he presumably believed in himself) to the investors, and soon enough, his company’s stock price skyrocketed to more than $200 per share, leading the company to a market value of about six billion dollars. The success of the company only attracted more investors and interested parties, and in the end, Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold Inc., an American company, was allowed into the door to become a partner.
Before signing the deal, Freeport decided to do its due diligence, which interestingly hadn’t been done so far. It didn’t take a lot of time for them to discover that the whole thing was a huge scam and that not one ounce of gold had been produced by the company so far. As the revelation came to light, the company’s value dived, and investors lost billions of dollars. Walsh, however, claimed that he had no knowledge of the scam and was duped by the geologists who roped him into the project. Notably, the main trio made $100 million by selling portions of their options in the company. Bre-X completely broke down in 1997, as an official investigation into the scam began.
David Walsh Passed Away Soon After the Scam Came to Light
David Walsh passed away on June 4, 1998, at the Doctors’ Hospital in Nassau, Bahamas, where he had been admitted a few days ago after he suffered a brain aneurysm. He was survived by his wife, Jeanette, and according to his will, the only things he left behind were worth $7,500 in household goods and a truck. He had moved to the Bahamas earlier in 1998, and due to the investigation and the declaration of bankruptcy on his behalf, the Bahamas Supreme Court had frozen his assets. He continued to claim innocence in the whole affair till the end of his days. When the scam came to light, he cooperated with the authorities in their investigation. He even hired a private investigator of his own, which confirmed that the gold was never real, but it also cleared his name, revealing that he had little knowledge, if at all, of what was actually going on in the mines.
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