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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

The TSX Venture Exchange fell 10.77 points to 581.71 Monday. James Varanese and Lord Simon Reading's suspended capital pool shell, Quartet Resources Ltd. (QRL), will ask shareholders at an Aug. 28 meeting in London, England, to approve conditions so that it can acquire Goldbelt International Ltd. as its qualifying transaction. The shell recently filed a prospectus for the sale of between 3.75 million units and 10 million units at 20 cents, a financing that Quartet must complete before it closes its QT. The shell hopes to complete the financing by Sept. 30.

Quartet will acquire Goldbelt, a gold company exploring the South Morila property in Mali (it also has properties in Burkina Faso and Senegal), for 7.5 million shares, after which the shell will change its name to Goldbelt Empires Ltd. Jonathan Challis and Mr. Varanese, both founding directors of Quartet, will each receive 1,590,763 of those 7.5 million shares. Mr. Challis, 63, a mining engineer and long-time stock promoter, will become chief executive officer when the QT closes. He currently lives in the United Kingdom, but he spent some time in Vancouver in the 1990s as an analyst at C.M. Oliver. In 1996, he joined the board of Robert and Eric Friedland's DiamondWorks Ltd., a diamond company that had projects in Africa. Two years later, the DiamondWorks promotion ended early with armed rebels seizing control of the company's Yetwene mine in Angola. Mr. Challis also worked for Robert Friedland's Ivanhoe Capital from 1997 to 1999, after which he became the president of Kenneth MacNeill's Shore Gold Inc. (SGF: $0.17), a diamond explorer with properties in Saskatchewan. When Mr. Challis arrived at Shore Gold, the stock traded at 25 cents, and when he left in 2003, it traded at $1.30. He then joined the board of Eric Friedland's Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. (PGD: $0.18), where he remained for 10 years, leaving in the spring of 2013.

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