Cranswick is fighting for the reclamation of his claim in Marange diamonds.The confiscation order by the Australian Deputy Commissioner of Taxes was against Cranswick’s estate after a creditor’s petition served on Cranswick on December 8 2009 relating to unpaid taxes in Australia, following an act of bankruptcy on June 9 2009. Cranswick last week denied any wrong doing.“The petition which resulted in the sequestration order was founded on an Australian tax assessment premised upon tax residency in Australia which I strongly deny,” said Cranswick. “Furthermore, I never personally received notice of the petition and only became aware of it after the hearing at which the sequestration order was made had taken place.” Cranswick and his company have been in the courts on many occasions with the latest being an appeal they made against a rescission judgment in September. The judgment rescinded the September 2009 High Court judgment which had confirmed the ACR’s title to its diamond claims at Marange.Away from the courts, ACR last week announced that exploration had yielded encouraging results despite “some frustrating delays in delivery of service and availability of suitable equipment”.Cranswick said that his company had made excellent progress and results of the amount of minerals that continued to emanate from its Gadzema gold projects and ground consolidation had met their expectations on the area. “Gold understandably forms the main focus of our resource definition efforts for the near future as target definition continues on other projects,” said Cranswick. “We continue to work towards a gold production phase at Pickstone Peerless and hope to make further announcements in this regard.”ACR is a multi-commodity resource development company primarily focused on Zimbabwe which has been operating in the country since 2004. The company benefits from a first mover advantage and has established a formidable balance sheet of assets at various stages of development. The broad commodity focus, which includes gold, nickel, copper, platinum, rock phosphate and diamonds, provides for a balanced asset portfolio with multi-mineral robustness.ACR has remained one of the mining companies which have invested in the sector despite the obstacles it has faced with regards to its claim of the Marange diamonds where it has been crudely elbowed out.
Leonard Makombe
