Tag: missing

South African goes missing in Finland

The family of a 60-year-old Boksburg man is worried after he disappeared while in Finland for a conference, Sapa reported.

Herc Croeser, a manager at Metso Minerals in South Africa, was due to have returned to South Africa’s OR Tambo International Airport at 9.40am on Saturday but had not boarded his flight in Finland.

Police found all his belongings, including passport and money in his hotel room.

It was his fourth trip to Finland and he had told his wife Rita that it would be his last as he was tired.

Rita Croeser said they communicated regularly and the last time she spoke to him was on Thursday evening at 8.15pm.

A message to him at 6am on Friday did not go through and he did not answer his phone.

“I have been married to Herc for 38 years and I know him. He would not just disappear, and he always replied to a message,” she said.

The hotel said he left there at 7pm for a nearby pub. CCTV shows him with colleagues and after he left at 10pm, he disappeared. He was on WhatsApp at 11pm.

His daughter Esti said his cellphone service provider said a call was made to South Africa just after 4pm on Friday. When they tried the number it did not work.

Gold worth R1,2 billion goes ‘missing’ at Rand Refinery

Rand Refinery, processor of about a third of the world’s gold since 1920, found $113 million (R1.2 billion) less physical metal than the company had booked in its accounts after adopting a new computer system.

The refinery in Germiston, a town 20 kilometres east of Johannesburg, has 87,000 ounces of physical gold less than the amount present in its accounting records after “implementation difficulties” with the new system, the company said in a statement today.

That’s worth about $113 million at today’s price of $1,296 an ounce.

Rand Refinery’s shareholders, including AngloGold Ashanti, Sibanye Gold and Harmony Gold Mining, agreed to lend the company 1.2 billion rand to help make up the difference.

Howard Craig resigned as chief executive officer in May and has been replaced by Mark Lynam, who is being assisted by management consultant Accenture in sorting out the issue.

Gold miners send bullion at about 80 percent purity to the refinery, which then treats it and boosts this to close to 100 percent.

Rand, Africa’s biggest processing facility for the metal, has refined almost 50,000 metric tons of gold since 1920, according to its website.

The miners, customers of the refinery, have received the prices they were expecting, leading them to conclude it’s most likely an accounting problem rather than theft, James Wellsted, a spokesman for Sibanye Gold, said by phone.

AngloGold, Sibanye and Harmony made loss provisions of about $92 million between them as a result of the lost ounces.

Rand Refinery has been unable to finalise its results for the year ended September 2013 because of the issue, it said.

Source: Bloomberg News

‘1202 police firearms missing’ – South African minister

A total of 1202 police firearms have gone missing since the beginning of last year, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa revealed on Wednesday.

Mthethwa said in a written Parliamentary response that 885 firearms were lost or stolen last year and 317 this year. Of those 170 had been recovered.

The Democratic Alliance said the large number of lost police firearms was fuelling an illicit trade in weapons.

“This means that the majority of these dangerous weapons are still out there on the street, most likely being used to commit crime,” said DA spokeswoman Dianne Kohler-Barnard.

“The reality is that the SAPS is fuelling the illegal firearms trade in this country.” – Sapa