Proactive disengagement: where to next for the ALC and Groote Eylandt?

 

I conjure you by that which you profess—

Howe’er you come to know it—answer me.

Though you untie the winds and let them fight…

… Even till destruction sicken,

answer me to what I ask you.

Macbeth Act four, Scene one.

 

Three weeks ago, on 16 October, the NIAA and NACC visited Groote and according to media reports met with the Anindilyakwa Land Council (ALC). Following the visit, the ALC board decided to dismiss their longstanding CEO, Mark Hewitt (link here). This follows an ABC news article on 10 July (link here) which quoted a spokesman for the NACC as confirming that it had received a referral from the NIAA and was assessing the referral. It appears (but is not certain) that the NIAA referral followed the May Senate Estimates hearings where Senator David Pocock questioned the ALC CEO about his dual roles as ALC CEO and as a Director of Winchelsea Mining, and summed up by commenting that Mr Hewitt’s dual roles were a "pretty egregious conflict of interest". According to the 10 July ABC news article, the Estimates Committee was advised that some $16m in royalty [equivalents] were directed to supporting the proposed Winchelsea mine.

Following the CEO’s dismissal, there appears to have been a conspiracy of silence from all involved. The ALC website has expunged all mention of Mr Hewitt but provides no explanation for the Board’s decision. The NACC continues its policy of complete silence until the results of its investigations are published. Minister Malarndirri McCarthy appears to have issued no media statement apart from her comments to the ABC (link here):

"I received a letter from the ALC chair informing me that at its meeting on October 16, the ALC board resolved to terminate the employment of the ALC CEO," Senator McCarthy said in a statement.

"Without the trust of the Anindilyakwa people and other key stakeholders, the ALC cannot properly achieve its mission of serving and advocating for the interests of the Anindilyakwa people."

All we can take from this is that the ALC Board lost trust in the CEO, but on what basis? The question is important because it goes to the nature of the issues that were of concern to the NACC and perhaps NIAA, and thus to the steps that need to be taken to remedy those issues.

Ever since the ANAO report into the ALC was published on 31 May 2023, the Government, Indigenous Australians Ministers Burney and subsequently McCarthy, and the NIAA have sought to downplay the issues which the ANAO report raised (for example by always focusing on the recommendations of the ANAO report rather than the myriad critical findings embedded throughout the report). They have also sought to slow down any proactive engagement, and thus avoid taking action to ensure the ALC was fulfilling its statutory obligations. In doing so, the Government has allowed the ALC, heavily influenced by its former CEO, to continue to pursue policies which are demonstrably at odds with normal standards of accountability, and which inevitably disadvantage the land council’s constituency, the traditional owners of the Groote archipelago.

To facilitate this proactive disengagement, the Government has adopted a strategy of intentional non-transparency. When interrogated, it invariably resorted to obfuscation, opacity and has hidden behind justifications which do not stack up under close scrutiny.

By deliberately not saying anything except when it has no choice, it has sought to minimise media attention by starving the issue of oxygen notwithstanding the fact that every time an ALC rock is turned over, a scorpion emerges. It has deliberately ignored the multiple concerns raised by numerous individuals including the 235 signatories to the Parliamentary petition tabled in February 2024, the issues raised in the SMH by Nick McKenzie and in the Saturday Paper by Ben Abbatangelo & Rachel Hoffman, and by me in two detailed letters to the ministers. This strategy has only worked because the Opposition has similarly adopted a studied position of policy insouciance. The Opposition Shadow Minister, Senator Jacinta Price has simultaneously argued for greater accountability of the land councils, unsuccessfully moving to establish a parliamentary inquiry into land council accountability, but failing to pursue in any substantive way the egregious issues that have emerged at the ALC (link here).

To date, the Minister appears to be continuing with her strategy of proactive disengagement. Meanwhile, while the NACC is focussed on determining whether there has been corrupt conduct by any individuals (inevitably a highly legalistic and thus narrowly focussed exercise), the potential for significant and ongoing financial losses and/or financial harm to the traditional owners on Groote remains unaddressed. These are two separate issues, and while they might overlap, it is unacceptable in my view for the Minister and NIAA to use the NACC investigation as the reason for doing nothing to mitigate the likely financial harms arising from the convoluted lattice-work of conflicts of interest that the ANAO uncovered in May 2023. Where is the public interest in waiting?  

Of course, the Government might argue that it set up the ‘independent review’ undertaken by BellChambersBarrett. This was sheer diversion to cover up inactivity. Ministers and the NIAA persisted in claiming the review was ‘independent’ notwithstanding that its recommendations were negotiated with and approved by the ALC (and implicitly its CEO Mr Hewitt who is now implicitly not trusted by the ALC and presumably the NIAA), notwithstanding that’s its drafts were commented upon and thus influenced by the NIAA Integrity Unit (and by implication the Minister), and importantly, notwithstanding that its terms of reference were limited to the implementation of the narrowly framed ANAO recommendations, and did not canvass broader or more recent issues. And of course, the ANAO report was itself limited by the ANAO’s remit to the operations of the ALC per se, whereas the complex flows of royalty distribution finance extend beyond the ALC to at least 12 corporations established under the CATSI Act, and over which the ALC exerted considerable influence if not actual control, thereby bypassing the intent of the Land rights Act to place individual distributions and investment decisions outside the purview of the land councils. The CATSI legislation itself falls under the Minister’s responsibilities.

Taking the commentary above as context, I propose to make some high-level observations on likely future developments and the necessary next steps in relation to the ALC.

The first set of observations relate to the case for undertaking a truly independent and transparent forensic audit of the ALC’s distribution of royalties and royalty equivalents. The ALC has leveraged these processes to allocate substantial (but as yet unquantified) financial resources to (a) retail outlets which do not appear to be independent of the ALC and its staff, and which may be shifting significant amounts of money to private individuals; (b) to request the Anindilyakwa Mining Trust (AMT) to transfer $41m to ARAC, a CATSI corporation which appears to have been effectively controlled by the ALC, but whose financial statements do not record the receipt of the payment which the AMT made; and (c) to effectively subsidising the infrastructure and other associated investments necessary to establish the Winchelsea mine which was / is effectively controlled by private investors and the former Chair and former CEO of the ALC (it is not clear if the Directors Winchelsea Mining have changed since the death of the former Chair and the dismissal of the ALC CEO; if they haven’t, then this in itself is a problem). The import of this subsidisation is in effect to grant funds to the interests which control Winchelsea Mining; yet analysis of the ALC’s own submission to the EIS suggests that the proposed mine will not be commercially viable (link here).

Even were these alleged financial misallocations to be found to involve corrupt conduct by the NACC, it would not fix the problem. What is required is a forensic audit to understand where the funds have been allocated and on what basis as the precursor to taking action to methodically unwind the arrangements that have been established to facilitate the misallocations. A forensic audit is thus the essential first step towards both addressing the conflict of interest and other problematic issues that have been allowed to develop within the ALC and to understanding whether it will be possible to recoup any misallocated funds. Moreover, delays will inevitably lead to an increase in the quantum of funds at risk of misallocation.

Perhaps more importantly, a forensic audit is an essential step in redesigning the ALC’s strategic financial strategy for the medium-term future given that the South32 mine is scheduled to close sometime in the early 2030s, with the almost immediate cessation of what is a significant financial flow to the Groote community. The sheer magnitude of these flows — which emanate from Commonwealth appropriations — to what is a relatively small population, which as has been previously pointed out (link here and link here) is paradoxically suffering from extraordinary levels of disadvantage, suggests that the Commonwealth itself has a responsibility to put in place a transition strategy of some kind. Again, the first step in doing so would be to understand just where the royalty and royalty equivalent financial flows have been allocated. It should not need to be said, but I will repeat it: the mere undertaking of a forensic audit is essentially a core regulatory oversight task, and it will not inevitably and adversely impact any ongoing investigations. Indeed, the reverse is more likely to be the case: it is likely to assist the investigation of potential legislative and accountability breaches, and it is possible that new lines of investigation in relation to corruption or criminal behaviours will emerge.

The second observation relates to the potential consequences of the current royalty distribution arrangements on Groote unravelling. There is more at stake here than an issue of whether an individual or group of individuals associated with the ALC have engaged in criminal activities or corrupt conduct. Notwithstanding the rhetorical hype that is often promulgated, the population on Groote are among the most disadvantaged citizens in Australia (link here). The reasons are complex and are not merely a matter of access to income. What is clear however is that the complexity and artificiality of the current financial arrangements on Groote are such as to exacerbate the risks of seriously negative social and cultural impacts from an erratic and haphazard unwinding of the current royalty distribution arrangements. The possibility of violence cannot be discounted. The implementation of any reform process will need to be managed. This is a task that will inevitably require external support. As a coda to this observation, I should emphasise that the risks of an unmanaged unwinding of current financial arrangements are higher if the Commonwealth chooses to remain inactive and disengaged. In my view, the Commonwealth now has no choice but to engage with the complexity its lack of regulatory oversight has unleashed (see below).

The third set of observations relates to the responsibilities of the Minister (and her predecessors) and NIAA to oversight the operations of statutory corporations in her portfolio. The scale and breadth of apparent maladministration; the quantum of the funds that may have been misallocated; the complexity of the financial arrangements involved; the convergence of public investment and private commercial interests, the sensitivity of the social, environmental and economic issues involved, and the extraordinary way in which much of this has developed and taken place in plain view indicates that there has been an extraordinary and substantial regulatory failure by the Commonwealth over a period going back to shortly after the former CEO Mr Hewitt was recruited. To provide just one example, the advice he gave to a previous Estimates Committee Hearing that he had a conversation with former Minister Scullion where he advised him of his dual roles on the ALC and Winchelsea Mining and assured him that there were arrangements in place to manage the conflict is (if true) an extraordinary revelation. Mr Hewitt claimed the subsequent Minister, Mr Wyatt, was also advised of the arrangement. These conversations in themselves appear to be significant watersheds in the development of the current royalty administration crisis, and yet appear to have elicited not one iota of concern within the Ministers’ Offices, nor NIAA (assuming of course that they knew of it; if they didn’t, what did NIAA do when they did become aware of the conflicted roles?).

Fourth, and finally, I make the observation that the current policy of proactive disengagement has meant that there is absolutely no information in the public domain regarding the current state of management of a key statutory corporation within the Minister’s portfolio. There are numerous legitimate questions that remain unasked and thus unanswered. To take some at random: what is the status of Ms Liu, Mr Hewitt’s spouse and a former employee of the ALC, who is /was actively engaged in the Royalty Shoppa scheme, in the ALC Royalty Management Unit (and thus a range of associated CATSI corporations), and in Winchelsea Mining? What is the status of the Chair of the ALC Audit Committee? How is it that the Audit Committee failed comprehensively over many years to identify and recommend the necessary changes to prevent the crisis that has emerged? For that matter, where was the NAIA Audit and Risk Committee in this whole process? Does the minister see these lapses as a problem and if so does she intend to do anything about it?  What is the current status of the proposal for a mine on Winchelsea Island?  Who are the Indigenous members of the Winchelsea Board following the dismissal of Mr Hewitt and death of the former Chair? Why did AAAC, the corporation which owns 70 percent of Winchelsea shares not have a single Director on the Winchelsea Mining Board? Has that been remedied recently?

More fundamentally, why has the current Government pursued a deliberate policy of proactive disengagement in relation to the operations of the ALC? How can the public and the traditional owners of Groote be reassured that the Government itself is not complicit in some way in what has transpired here?

The ALC and its associated recipient CATSI corporations are in a state of crisis. A crisis that no one wants to acknowledge, let alone seeks to fix. An apt metaphor would be a commercial corporation operating while insolvent. The risk is that it will seek to trade its way out of its financial crisis, and in the process, go bankrupt with even greater losses. The solution is for the shareholders to appoint insolvency specialists who can make an independent assessment and address the underlying issues.

In the present case, it is the Minister to whom this responsibility falls. To date, she has given absolutely no indication that she is cognisant of the risks or prepared to take the necessary action. She should immediately take action to appoint a highly experienced independent administrator to the ALC with the authority to oversee an independent forensic audit and to develop a pathway out of the current crisis. This process will require full transparency to minimise the risks of societal conflict on Groote, to ensure that those responsibility for getting the ALC into its current morass are held accountable, and importantly to maximise the chances that those who will be found to have suffered financial losses or disadvantage are recompensed. This responsibility goes beyond one individual and the possibility at some point in the future of a limited finding of corruption or misfeasance in public office.  And it goes beyond the ALC and its employees.

 

5 November 2024

 

The deeper corruption at the heart of the governance issues on Groote Eylandt

 

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity

finer than the staple of his argument.

Love's Labour's Lost, Act 5 scene 1

 

The Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy has released the review into the Anindilyakwa Land Council commissioned by the former Minister in February 2024 (link here).

The Minister’s media release (link here) refers to the review as ‘the Independent Review’, however this is complete spin as the review which was ostensibly prepared by accounting firm Bellchambers Barrett, was clearly undertaken with close oversight by the NIAA (who arguably are not independent given their previous funding of projects associated with the proposed Winchelsea  mine), and in conjunction in many respects with the ALC. The final report is signed and approved by three individuals: Cherelle Wurrawilya, Chair of the ALC, Sean Worth, Group Manager integrity NIAA, and Russell Livermore, Partner Bellchambers Barrett.

The report avoids providing a clear statement of the formal terms of reference provided to BellChambers by NIAA, and provides only general information on the dates from which the review began work. The time frame covered by the review is limited to the date of publication of the ANAO Audit and extends to July 2024. It is apparent from the context that the review is focussed entirely on the progress (or lack thereof) in implementing the ANAO recommendations which as I pointed out in previous posts was itself focussed on process and not outcomes, and limited to the operations of the ALC. The Review was not focussed (except in an indirect manner) on the ways in which the ALC has been utilising the various related entities in receipt of royalty equivalents (which are required to be CATSI corporations) to bypass the legislative constraints on ALC actions and/or to obscure financial flows directed to various commercial projects (such as the proposed Winchelsea mine and perhaps retail activities of various kinds on Groote).

What is missing from the Bellchambers Review is any context. There is no explanation of the role of the Minister and her responsibility for ensuring that statutory entities within her portfolio are complying with both their establishing legislation and various other Commonwealth governance requirements such as those set out in the PGPA legislation. There is no explanation of the role of land councils in the NT, of the way in which the royalty regime operates, of the significance of the ABA, nor of the regulatory frameworks in place in relation to distribution of royalty equivalents and other mining related payments. There is no mention of the substantial dissatisfaction amongst numerous residents on Groote with the ALC’s operations as evidenced by the petition signed by some 200 people and tabled in Parliament earlier this year. There is no mention of the fact that a Commonwealth entity (and I am reliably informed a number of other individuals) have lodged complaints with the National Anti Corruption Commission. I was reminded of the episode of Fawlty Towers ‘Don’t mention the war’ (link here).

Instead, what we have is a technical exercise in bureaucratic pedantry focussed on the extent to which various processes recommended by the ANAO have been implemented.

I am not proposing to undertake a detailed critique of the analysis by Bellchambers related to the ALC’s compliance with process requirements. They conclude that the ALC response to the ANAO recommendations relating to various governance process requirements remains deficient. Focussing on process is useful, but it no substitute for focussing on outcomes. The allegations of outcome deficiencies (potentially involving tens of millions of dollars) demand a regulatory response. It is not good enough to say that this is an issue for the ALC nor to say that the NACC is investigating.

I will make some short comments on the recommendations of the Bellchambers Review set out in section three under the anodyne heading Identified Enhancements to Governance.

Under theme one dealing with conflicts of interest, the Bellchambers Review recommends inter alia:

1. The ALC Board and Management should review all roles for Board members and ALC Management and assess whether: a. It is possible to effectively manage identified conflicts of interest for: i. the dual remuneration CEO positions for ALC and Winchelsea Mining Pty Ltd. ii. related party entities / ORICs that are beneficiaries of funding decisions made by the ALC Board. b. Management strategies for declared conflicts by ALC Board members or Management, including conflicts relating to immediate family members, are appropriate and operating effectively.

My comment: this is extraordinary. Bellchambers and the NIAA appear to believe that an entity whose key members are the subject of multiple allegations involving financial impropriety and are the subject of a current NACC investigation should be trusted to decide how to manage the conflicts of interest identified by the ANAO and more than a year later are still in place. Do Bellchambers and the NIAA believe that the systemic networks of conflicts were put in place by accident or oversight? Get real! Furthermore, the recommendation explicitly accepts that the ALC CEO, who as a statutory office holder is paid a salary determined by the Commonwealth Remuneration Tribunal (based on the fact that the CEO is employed full time), should also be the recipient of a private sector salary, and by implication will not be providing full time services in his role as the CEO.

The ALC response includes, after some anodyne pabulum:

The Board has commenced this review for the ALC CEO position. On 22 August 2024 the Board resolved to give in principle support to the draft NIAA report finding that the ALC CEO no longer also be the CEO of Winchelsea Mining. Specifically, in an ordered way, the ALC Board resolved to give in principle support to the current ALC CEO’s proposal that he cease in the ALC CEO role and commence as a consultant for Winchelsea Mining and Groote Holding Aboriginal Corporation matters, which consultancy is anticipated to include other pressing matters particularly the GEMCO mine closure and Transition Steering Committee. A final decision about the current CEO’s proposal will be made by the incoming ALC Board (ie after current elections) after receiving the NIAA’s final Independent review report.

My comment:

The CEO is proposing to resign as CEO of Winchelsea Mining but remain as a consultant and presumably a Director. Given the small size of Winchelsea, its tight Directorship structure, and its low staff numbers, it beggars belief that Mr Hewitt would exercise any less influence as a consultant than as CEO. Furtehrmore, there are real questions as to why the CEO is on the Board and not any members fo the corporation who actually own the stake in Winchelsea (see below). Moreover it also beggars belief that the Minister and the NIAA are prepared to openly countenance what is in effect double dipping by a statutory office holder employed in a statutory corporation.

ERRATUM: It has come to my attention that I have probably misinterpreted the highlighted text above and that the proposal from the ALC is that the ALC CEO will resign as CEO of the ALC (and not as I had read it as an ALC representative Director on the Winchelsea Board). 

While this would be a signfiicant imporvement on the status quo, to the extent that the current CEO excercises substantial informal influence, it may make no difference whatsoever. It is unclear why Mr Hewitt would need to take up the role of consultant on Winchelsea given that he is already a Director. Presumably the issue of remuneration (potentially funded by the ALC or AAAC (the corporation which owns the Indigenous equity in Winchelsea) provides part of the reason. END ERRATUM

Under theme two, the Belchambers Review recommends:

The ALC should collate information for all remuneration, benefits and related party transactions for ALC Board members, ALC Management, immediate family members and related party entities / ORICs to support enhanced transparency and information for Board members. The remuneration, benefits and related party transactions should be subject to periodic review and update and used to ensure that all remuneration, benefits and relathed party transactions are appropriately authorised and monitored. 

My comment: As the ALC response points out, it is unclear that the ALC has the formal powers to collect this information. Again this is an entirely passive and anodyne. More importantly, where is the critical engagement by the NIAA Integrity Group?

Under theme three, the Bellchambers Review recommends:

3. The ALC should establish an Independent Board Advisor Role with direct responsibilities to the Board including: a. Understanding Board matters, papers and forward workplan agenda b. Governance matters, including monitoring of conflict of interests and associated management strategies c. Governance training d. Supporting attendance / participation by the full Board….

My comment: apart from the logistical and communication challenges, this is precisely the role of the CEO of the ALC. It implicitly accepts that the current CEO has been incapable and unwilling to provide the level of independent advice required by the Board. There is a simple and clear solution to that problem which for some reason entirely evades the Minister and her NIAA advisers.

Under theme four, the Belchambers Review recommends a closure process for the ANAO recommendations.

My comment: this is core business for the ALC Audit Committee which is chaired by the partner in an accounting firm whose services in relation to the Audit Committee the ANAO identified as being the most expensive by far of the four land councils, and which is itself heavily conflicted by virtue of the provision of other services to corporations which are controlled indirectly by the ALC. The ALC response foreshadowed requests for additional funding to cover off a function which is already overfunded and which is clearly compromised and ineffective. None of this appears to be on the radar of the NIAA Integrity Unit!

The Real Story

Minister McCarthy’s media statement identifies only two substantive actions arising from the review:

I have written to the ALC Board to ensure the Board and voters are aware of the review’s findings ahead of the ALC Board elections next week.

I have taken the unusual decision to withhold approval for the ALC’s 2024/25 budget, instead approving an operational budget until 1 December 2024. The full budget will only be considered when ALC has demonstrated to the NIAA that it is sufficiently prioritising and implementing the recommendations of the review and the ANAO audit.

These are worthy steps, create an impression of diligent oversight, and are completely irrelevant to addressing the fundamental governance issues confronting the ALC and impacting the future  financial security of Groote’s 1200 residents (and their descendants).

In my view, the Bellchambers Review was from the start designed as a diversion to avoid addressing the deeper and systemic governance challenges that have emerged on Groote since the current CEO was engaged by the ALC. The previous posts related to Groote on this blog have primarily dealt with the widespread allegations of substantive governance and accountability failure and the concomitant adverse policy implications. I wont link to those posts here. They deal with inter alia the significant diversion of mining related financial payments towards the development of a proposed mine on Winchelsea Island; the financial arrangements related to the ownership of Winchelsea Mining Corporation; discrepancies between the investments being allocated towards Winchelsea and the value of the identified manganese deposits on Winchelsea; the governance and potential financial implications of the ALC’s apparent control of the financial affairs of key corporations in receipt of royalty equivalents; the conflict of interest implications involving the CEO, his spouse, the chair of the ALC Audit committee; and the extraordinary financial benefits made available to former ALC Board members at the discretion of the Board (which raises questions regarding potential for co-option and undue influence). And much else besides. Many of these issues have been raised either directly or indirectly in Senate Estimates Hearings, in a number of substantial investigative reports in the SMH and the Saturday Paper, and have been the subject of correspondence to Ministers from concerned parties.

While the formal response from the ALC has been to reject some (but not all) of the allegations or argue that they are misdirected, the response from Ministers has been to ignore these issues, except insofar as a review of ALC processes, not substantive allegations was commissioned. Until this week, the Bellchambers Review (whose terms of reference have still not been released) in effect served as the foil to avoid having to respond to the substantive issues.

So in addition to the complex and myriad issues related to the ALC and its governance, it seems to me that there is a fundamental questions to be asked and answered: why has the Government not been prepared to address the substantive allegations and issues related to the ALC and its governance?

My initial thought was that this was a case of politics overwhelming good policy. Yet upon reflection, I do not think the facts fit such an explanation.

A better explanation is that the ALC, or elements within it, have in effect captured the Commonwealth and probably the NT Government in relation to issues on Groote Eylandt. How else to explain the ALC’s extraordinary hold over successive Ministers, the extraordinary outcomes that have become normalised (such as the ALC Chair and CEO being on both sides of a mining agreement that requires Ministerial approval; or of the salary double dipping; or of the fact that the Aboriginal Corporation which owns 70 percent of Winchelsea has no Directors on the Winchelsea Board, but the ALC Chair, CEO and CEO’s spouse are represented).

It is unclear to me whether the mechanism of state capture involving extraordinary influence over the political elites in the NT and to a lesser extent Canberra is  driven by the corrupt co-option of those political elites, or gross administrative and political incompetence. I should note that the complicity and co-option extends to the Opposition parties in Darwin and in Canberra. In one of my earliest posts analysing the Estimates questioning following the ANAO report, I commented upon the current Federal Opposition’s apparent disinterest in digging into what was occurring on Groote. In Canberra, the former coalition ministers apparent inability to rein in the ALC was facilitated by the then Labor Opposition’s disinterest in pursuing issues of accountability in the Indigenous policy domain. Whether it is corruption or gross incompetence, the accepted standards of political and administrative accountability would normally demand that the responsible Ministers and perhaps those bureaucratic advisers who knowingly ignore their legal obligations should have their employment terminated.  

Of course, I don’t hold out much hope that the current Prime Minister will be prepared to take action. I am surprised that these issues are not on the radar of the Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet. I am certain of two things however: first, this is not going to end well; and second, the longer governments prevaricate, the worse the fallout will be. Unfortunately, as is the way with these things, the most severe impacts will likely fall on the people of Groote Eylandt.

Finally I should note that the ABC provides an informative overview in an article dated 29 August which places the review in a much broader context. Unfortunately it has the rather misleading headline Commonwealth freezes funding to Anindilyakwa Land Council as chief executive Mark Hewitt flags resignation (link here). It is misleading insofar as the minister has not frozen the ALC’s funding (and probably never will) but has merely deferred providing approval for ongoing expenditure beyond 1 December, and the CEO has not resigned from the ALC (as the headline suggests), but is proposing to resign as CEO of Winchelsea Mining but remain as a consultant and presumably a Director (as discussed above). ERRATUM: this last statement is probably incorrect; see the erratum above.