"any large-scale private investors will maintain a watchful eye over what's going on"
Here's a question then. Why wouldn't any large-scale private investors such as you postulate, simply pick up another of the thousands of abandoned silver mines that dot the lonely windswept peaks of the far off Andes and start their own venture, minus these obvious charlatans? Are you suggesting there's something special about this particular project that centuries of miners have eschewed?