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Red Pine Exploration Inc., further to its press releases of May 1, 2024, and May 6, 2024, provides a further update on the Company’s progress on its investigations into the reporting inconsistencies of certain assay results from the Wawa Gold Project.
While the investigations are ongoing, based on the findings made to date, Red Pine believes that the reporting inconsistencies disclosed in the Prior Press Releases resulted from the unauthorized manipulation of certain assay results received from Activation Laboratories Ltd. by the Company’s former Chief Executive Officer.
Based on a review of, among other things, the chain of custody of the drill core assay results, the Company has determined that:
- the correct assay results were sent via email by Actlabs to the Company, addressed only to the Former CEO;
- manipulated drill core assay results from the spring of 2015 to January 30, 2024 were sent by the Former CEO to staff for download into the Company’s database and were then used for a variety of purposes, including in-house resource modelling, the National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report dated June 21, 2023 (with a resource effective date of May 31, 2019) entitled “National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report for the Wawa Gold Project”” (the “Technical Report”), and other public disclosure; and
- 532 out of approximately 98,000 drill core assay results in the overall database appear to have been manipulated since Red Pine acquired the Wawa Gold Project in 2014.
The Company is in the process of reporting these matters to the Ontario Securities Commission and is evaluating its options with respect to other legal remedies available to it.
Following the discovery of an assay reporting inconsistency on April 29, 2024, between the certified assay result received from Actlabs and the corresponding assay result in the Company’s database, staff immediately commenced a review of other assay results to determine if this was an isolated incident. When the review pointed to multiple instances of inconsistencies between the certified assay results received from Actlabs and the corresponding assay results in the Company’s database (“Assay Reporting Inconsistencies”), staff alerted the Chair of the Board on April 30, 2024. The Board immediately held a meeting to consider the matter and determined that a detailed review would be required to fully determine the impact of the Assay Reporting Inconsistencies on the Wawa Gold Project and the Company’s public disclosure record. Accordingly, out of an abundance of caution, the Company issued a press release on May 1, 2024, prior to the commencement of trading in which it advised the public not to rely on any assay results that were previously disclosed until it could determine, with the help of an independent investigator, whether, and to what extent, its public disclosure had been compromised.
Since that time, the Company has been working to understand the extent of the Assay Reporting Inconsistencies and to determine the impact of the Assay Reporting Inconsistencies on the reported mineralization of the Wawa Gold Project. As reported in the Company’s press release of May 6, 2024, the Company engaged WSP Global Inc. to lead an independent data verification of all assay certificates from 2014 to the present.
The Company delineated its investigations over two distinct periods: the assay results received over the period 2014-2019 which resulted in the mineral resource estimates set out in the Technical Report (the “2014-2019 Period”), and the period from 2019 to the present (the “2019-2024 Period”), during which certain assay results were disclosed to the market by way of press releases.
2014-2019 Period
Based on the methodology described below, the Company believes that the Assay Reporting Inconsistencies for the 2014-2019 Period has resulted in an estimated reduction of the previously reported mineral resources in the Technical Report as follows:
- Surluga was previously reported with an indicated mineral resource containing 5.31 g/t in 1,202,000 tonnes with contained gold of 205,000 ounces. No material losses are anticipated.
- Surluga was previously reported with an inferred mineral resource containing 5.22 g/t in 2,362,000 tonnes with contained gold of 396,000 ounces. The Company now estimates a reduction of between 205,000 and 240,000 tonnes grading, on average, 6.0 to 7.0 g/t gold resulting in an estimated loss of 39,500 to 54,000 ounces from the inferred part of the Surluga Deposit mineral resource estimate;
- Minto was previously reported with an indicated mineral resource containing 7.5 g/t in 105,000 tonnes with contained gold of 25,000 ounces. The Company now estimates a reduction of between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes grading, on average, 8.5 to 9.5 g/t gold resulting in an estimated loss of between 8,000 and 12,000 ounces from the indicated part of the Minto Deposit mineral resource estimate;
- Minto was previously reported with an inferred mineral resource containing 6.6 g/t in 354,000 tonnes with contained gold of 75,000 ounces. The Company now estimates a reduction of between 75,000 and 85,000 tonnes grading, on average, 6.5 to 7.5 g/t gold resulting in an estimated loss of between 16,000 and 20,000 ounces from the inferred part of the Minto Deposit mineral resource estimate;
The reader is cautioned that there has been insufficient work completed to precisely determine the actual losses resulting from the manipulations and it is uncertain if additional work will precisely determine the actual losses. The Company emphasizes that the foregoing estimated losses are the Company’s internal estimates and have not been confirmed by an independent qualified person.
Attached to this press release as Schedule “A” is a table summarizing the restatement of previous assay results for the 2014-2019 Period. The complete details on the drilling intercepts, including all the segments of the individual drillholes, and the attributes of the affected drillholes is available on the Company’s website at https://redpineexp.com/may-update-assay-appendix and will be filed on SEDAR+.
The impact of the manipulated results on the Surluga and Minto mineral resources was estimated using the following methodology:
- Initially, the number of manipulated intersections was determined for each of the zones of the mineral resources. For the Jubilee shear system (Surluga Deposit), 22 drilling intersections were found to have been manipulated and for the Minto Mine Shear, 13 drilling intersections were found to have been manipulated (Schedule “A”).
- An evaluation was done to confirm the location of the drill holes containing manipulated results within each of the zones estimated in the mineral resources. This evaluation contextualized the density of drilling surrounding those intersections with manipulated results and the spacing between manipulated and non-manipulated intersections.
- For the drill holes completed in areas without dense drilling or where many manipulated holes are located, the next step was to quantify the magnitude of the manipulations on the capped metal factors for each of the drill hole to approximate the metal losses. The following capping thresholds used in the mineral resource estimate were applied.
- 80.00 g/t gold for the main shear segment of the Surluga deposit
- 40.00 g/t gold for the satellite shear segments of the Surluga deposit
- 35.00 g/t gold for the Minto Mine shear
Jubilee Shear System for the Surluga Deposit Mineral Resource
The Company has determined that the assay results for 22 intersections (out of approximately 1,812 intersections) were manipulated, the details of which are as follows:
- the intersections with manipulated results are negatively impacting less than 10% of the total surface area of the Surluga deposit mineral resource;
- 9 manipulated intersections are in areas with a high to very high density of unmanipulated intersections and are unlikely to impact the mineral resource estimation, especially for the Indicated component of the Surluga deposit mineral resource;
- 3 manipulated intersections in 3 drill holes are too low in terms of manipulated and corrected grade to impact the mineral resource;
- 1 capped intersection with manipulated results is the same as the capped corrected intersection; and
- 5 intersections have moderate to low losses in metal factor that will have moderate to low impacts on the inferred part of the mineral resource,
leaving 4 intersections in 3 drill holes with manipulated results that support the inferred part of the mineral resource which have significant losses in metals that are expected to negatively impact three areas of the inferred mineral resource.
Minto Mine Shear for the Minto Mine Mineral Resource
The Company has determined that the assay results for 13 intersections (out of approximately 276 intersections) were manipulated, the details of which are as follows:
- the intersections with manipulated results are negatively impacting 25% to 35% of the surface area of the indicated mineral resource and 20% to 30% of the inferred mineral resource;
- 9 intersections are negatively impacted by significant to moderate losses in metal factors; and
- 4 intersections are negatively impacted by moderate to low losses in metal factors.
2019 – 2024 Period
While the investigations continue, the Company is hopeful that it will be able to provide an overview of the manipulation implications on the drilling results which were publicly disclosed for the 2019-2024 Period by way of press release prior to market opening on Wednesday, May 15, 2024. However, there can be no assurances that the Company will be able to complete this work by that date.
The Company also plans to host a conference call at 10:00 a.m. E.T. on Wednesday, May 15, 2024 at which Paul Martin, Red Pine’s Board Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Michael Michaud, Red Pine’s incoming President & Chief Executive Officer, will present the findings set out in such press release.
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