JCI has decided not to sell the Letseng Diamond mine in Lesotho after a lengthy tender process since none of the offers were acceptable. The sale of the mine had already been restricted to a shortlist of bidders but management at JCI, part owner of Letseng, has decided it would be better off keeping the asset. “The JCI board decided it was more attractive to hold on to Letseng,” says Gibson, Spokes person for JCI.

However JCI has denied that the mine is for sale. JCI was rescued from near bankruptcy by Investec, a South African financial institution, around September last year, after it had put its own and Matodzi Resources’s stakes in Letseng up for sale. The mine was valued at around 2 billion rand by certain Matodzi officials earlier in 2005, but prospective bidders later claimed that it would not fetch more than 500 million rand. JCI will take a 57% stake in Matodzi through the conversion of preference shares that it owns in the company. And Matodzi now beneficially holds 50% of the issued share capital of Letseng Investment Holdings South Africa (Pty) Limited, which owns 76% of Letseng.

The Lesotho government owns the other 24% of the mine. Following the ousting of Brett Kebble, the new management at JCI has gone about making sense of the company’s complicated financial history. The results have been delayed a number of times with the most recent update claiming that evidence of misappropriation had been discovered.