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tury. They understood mining and there
was good mining law and most impor-
tantly, we believed Pinochet was going to
create what he had promised, a free market
economy and a democracy. He did both.
We picked up two good gold projects that
became major discoveries. Often when
there's copper mineralization, there's gold
mineralization as well.
That's one of the contrarian moves, as
was going to Russia with Bema in 1998,
when the gold price was below $300 per
ounce and Russia was very much out of
favour with investors. We enjoyed great
success there building a low cost gold
mine (Julietta) and then discovering and
building the world-class Kupol Mine in Far
East Russia. Then when Bema was taken
over by Kinross, for $3.5 billion in 2007,
we said, "What are we going to do now?
Let's do it again." So we started B2Gold.
RW: Let's go to what you're doing today.
For new gold property acquisitions, do
you consider all levels from grassroots up
to brownfield projects?
CJ: Absolutely. We look at everything
from grassroots up because we've made
large discoveries. The exploration team
here is mostly the same team that was
behind the success of Bema. We're always
looking for high quality grassroots targets
because the cheapest ounces of gold are the
ones you find. We also seek out develop-
ment projects. If you look at the history of
B2Gold, you'll see that for most of the last
10 years, we've completed an acquisition,
built a mine and gone onto the next one
and the next one, now totaling five mines.
RW: What are your criteria for identify-
ing attractive gold properties?
CJ: I think one of the keys to success of
Bema and B2Gold has been the quality of
our due diligence and our technical team.
Our technical team is highly experienced
and conservative. A good place to start is
where other companies have succeeded
or failed but we're always open for ideas
where others have feared to tread such
as Chile in 1988 and Russia in 1998. The
criteria are extremely disciplined in terms
about what we're looking for. It's very dif-
ferent when looking at grassroots because
