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Felderhof, the vice-chairman and chief geologist at Bre-X, had sold more than $80-million worth of his company’s stock in 1996, not long before the fraud was exposed and wiped out hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder value.

He faced charges of insider trading and authorizing misleading news releases, but the judge in the case ruled that the tampering that affected thousands of core samples was sophisticated, and that Felderhof could have reasonably believed there was a large gold deposit at the Busang mine.

Photo by Gatra photo/Larry MacDougal/Calgary Herald files

Two of the other main players in the Bre-X saga had died by the time Felderhof was charged and faced trial. David Walsh, the company’s chief executive, died of a brain aneurysm in 1998 at the age of 52. Geologist Michael de Guzman fell to his death from a helicopter in the Indonesian jungle in 1997, just a week before Freeport-McMoRan revealed it found “insignificant” amounts of gold at the Bre-X mine.

Felderhof never regained his career or reputation as a geologist after his acquittal, according to his Toronto lawyer Joe Groia, who successfully defended him against the charges levelled by the Ontario Securities Commission.

On Monday, Groia told the Financial Post it was a “difficult day” for him after learning that Felderhof had died of natural causes in the Philippines.

“John was a man who I came to respect enormously for his tenacity and I always regretted not being able to do more for him,” Groia said.