Took me all of 5 mins to confirm that the gold at Pueblo Viejo can be seen by a scanning electron microscope, see image below.
View attachment 1445789Where are the SEM images of the gold particles at BBX's prospects? And given that the gold at BBX's prospects is at least ten times the gold grades seen at Pueblo Viejo then you would expect that the gold would be able to be seen in a cut thin section of rock (or even naked eye at those grades).
You will also note that the orebody at Pueblo Viejo can be assayed by conventional assay techniques and that normal QA/QC processes with reference standards can be seen in the report linked below. I can also see in this presentation that the mill and infrastructure of Pueblo Viejo cost in the order of $1.5Bn USD - I don't suppose Drake have a lazy $1.5Bn lying around to fund a similar plant? Have a look at the size and cost of the infrastructure at Pueblo Viejo here:
https://www.miningdataonline.com/reports/PuebloViejo_Technical_Report_03232018.pdfIts an important point to note that Warwick Grigor makes in that article that BBX's proprietary metallurgical extraction is not a reliable assay technique subject to the usual scrutiny and purview of the ASX and JORC reporting standards for exploration activities and assay QA/QCs. So any disappointed shareholders/bag holders whom believed that the metallurgical extraction results are representative of the possible mineralization at BBX's prospects would be going to the Corporations Act and/or Trade Practised Act for legal avenues.
As others have pointed out - BBX were free to take defamation action against WG any time, yet despite some peoples assertions that a defamation action would be a lay-down misere they have not pursued this further because it would quickly become a court case around the defence of fair comment and truth that BBX would never be able to disprove. They can't even prove to their own shareholders that they have a reliable and accurate assay technique or method of economically extracting gold yet so they are not going to try and argue that in a court....
