In 2008 Antonio Clemente, a US-born engineer resident in Panama met Patrick Abraham, another US citizen resident in Panama at the time who was the founder and a director of Bellhaven Copper & Gold, a Toronto listed junior with exploration properties in Panama. That year Bellhaven decided to look for properties in Colombia that were opening up and reached an exploration agreement with two Colombian citizens that owned several exploration titles in an old mining area next to the town of Gomez Plata, two hours by car north east from Medellin in the Department of Antioquia.

Mr. Clemente at the time had 24 years working as a financial advisor for firms like Merrill Lynch, Paine Webber and UBS, and in 2005 had moved from the United States to Panama to start Athena Capital Inc., an independent financial advisory firm. Mr. Clemente always thought that physical gold should be part of any diversified investment portfolio and traveled several times to Colombia with the principals of Bellhaven and befriended the Colombian couple that owned the land titles in Gomez Plata.

In 2009 Bellhaven decided to change course, and instead of looking for underground high grade veins available in Gomez Plata, to concentrate their efforts in finding disseminated deposits in the Cauca belt. Soon after, in September 2009, Mr. Clemente decided to start Morocota Gold with Athena Capital Inc., Mr. Clemente’s wholly owned investment adviser firm in Panama as the shareholder that would provide the funding, and the Colombian couple that would provide the land titles.

By November 2011 it was recognized that more funding was necessary to advance the project and to build a small processing plant with the objective of generating enough free cash flow to finance further exploration of the extensive property package. Mr. Clemente invited a group of friends to become shareholders of Morocota and between the end of 2011 and mid 2012 the company grew to nine shareholders total, including the two Colombians, Athena and six new shareholders. The new partners were from different nationalities, but they all shared the desire to own a piece of a gold mine as a diversification of their investment portfolio.

During the difficult period of 2013-2017 for the exploration industry Morocota was able to survive thanks to the funds provided by its shareholders. We had several cash calls and some partners contributed and some not, therefore diluting their position. Those funds were sufficient to keep the company alive but not to continue exploring and take the company to the next level. In 2017 we met a Swiss entrepreneur who became the 10th shareholder and we have now substantially increased the exploration pace.

In March 2018 at the Annual Shareholders meeting it was decided that to make the company more attractive to future shareholders, strategic investors from the mining industry, private equity funds or eventually an IPO, we should change our current corporate structure with only a Colombian company to one where the parent company would be a company incorporated in Canada that owned the majority of the Colombian company.