Ivanhoe riding roughshod

Ivanhoe riding roughshod

ICC was the privately owned venture capital corporation Friedland had used throughout the late eighties, both to fund his exploits and to secure personal financial coups. Indeed, when he resigned from Galactic in November 1990, "removing himself from any hand in management of the precious metals company" [American Metal Market (AMM) vol. 98 no. 218, 1990: "Galactic founder resigns"], Friedland declared he would now "devote all my time to Ivanhoe". Little known is that Ivanhoe entered an agreement with the discredited Galactic at the same time, under which the latter had first right to participate with either Ivanhoe or Friedland personally, in any future joint venture anywhere in the world [AMM ibid].

Friedland moved Ivanhoe from Vancouver to Singapore in 1996. Two years earlier, his entry into Burma had been facilitated by the Burmese Vancouver-based businessman, Reggie Tun Maung, who became the senior vice president of Invanhoe Myanmar Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ivanhoe Capital Corp. Maung's son had married the daughter of the Burmese military regime (SLORC) deputy prime minister, Vice Admiral Maung Maung Khin; Reggie was also the president of the Vancouver Buddhist Society, to which Friedland had once donated around US$75,000 [Nation 13/12/96]. It was Ivanhoe Myanmar Holdings which in early 1994 was to seal a compact with SLORC's Number One Mining Company, in order to exploit the Monywa copper deposit [MJ 1/4/94]; the financing would later be bequeathed to Friedland's Indochina Goldfields (IGL) (see below) [MJ 22/8/95].