My thinking on Krong is not any better or worth more than any other opinion. But I do have one. :)
The basis for speculation is:
1. Every time I search for “Magadan gold producers”, “Valentin Chegenev”, etc. the Chegenev’s company “Puma” pops up among other companies of the region. “Krong” is nowhere close. You need to put special efforts to find old references to the company (which was mentioned as “daughter enterprise of Puma” in one old article).
2. Reading sunwz’s emails from TsNIGRI I believe they are authentic and written by Romanchuk.
3. A couple of weeks ago I’ve requested information about NWOG (SZNG) and Krong from Interfax Spark Database – the most reliable Russian source of information on Russian businesses. The response was: “We can provide you with profile on North-West Oil Group and general information on OOO Krong . The latter has not reported its financials since 2000.”
4. Aurus announced acquisition of Krong in September, 2006 and in May of 2006 Krong signed the agreement with Roshal Combine about transfer of pyrite waste pile, which they received for free for “utilization” purpose.
Speculation:
So, based on all of the above I conclude that until May 2006 “Krong” was inactive “dead” company. They don’t use term “shell” in Russia, but it’s basically what it was. Every time when they talk about "plant", "production", etc. they probably mean Puma (or even something else - every insider owns more than one company). It was pretty smart idea – to put Roshal pile on Krong’s balance, merge Krong into Aurus, hire TsNIGRI and Arkadia to make worthless waste pile worth $4 bln overnight. First part of the plan didn’t require any money (which Krong didn’t have) so it was easy. To realize the second part they needed to pay TsNIGRI and Arkadia. I am not even sure Krong had active bank accounts at that time. Anyway, who cares, another Chegenev’s company “Puma” was active and producing something (switched to iron from gold recently), so they probably contacted directly Romanchuk’s unit (bypassing Migachev) with request to test Roshal’s pile that was presented as Puma’s property. I don’t know if they really transferred pile from Krong to Puma (which requires just 5 minutes to print the “transfer agreement”) or TsNIGRI never checked the ownership (most likely). But I think Romanchuk did perform analysis for Puma. The document he signed was issued for Puma. I don’t know whether it was close to what we see in published report… too many discrepancies even within the report. Not even mentioning December “contract” and “summary” that doesn’t match report at all and look like complete fabrication. I think Aurus “adjusted” Romanchuk's report by replacing “Puma” by “Krong” everywhere, and maybe changing something else.
The interesting thing, though, how they managed to shift everybody's attention from 2+ tons of gold production in 2007 (which would be huge if true) to this debates around Krong’s pile. I posted many times that “reserves” in Russia are not worth much until they are produced and sold. They don't really belong to you in a sense of "ownership" we have here in US. Even if everything is OK with pyrite pile and TsNIGRI report is real, this would add little real value to Aurus. It’s clearly stated in “TsNIGRI papers” that to organize production they need to implement “state of the art” technology. If it was some Japan or German company I may count on this. But Krong? Sorry… not in this century. So, show investors where those record 2 tons of gold came from, and the PPS will jump up automatically. Let Roshal pile be the icing on the cake – the dream about future “state of the art” production.
End of speculation.
This could be completely wrong, but I was asked about my "thinking"... and my thinking is often wrong. :)
IMO
AI
Market Data 
Markets 
