Australian billionaire mining magnate Ken Talboty is missing feared dead along with all his company's directors after their chartered plane crashed in dense equatorial African jungle.Mr Talbot heads iron ore miner Sundance Resources and was on a flight wi
Australian billionaire mining magnate Ken Talboty is missing feared dead along with all his company's directors after their chartered plane crashed in dense equatorial African jungle.
Mr Talbot heads iron ore miner Sundance Resources and was on a flight with five other Australian members of his board.from Yaounde, Cameroon, to a gold mine at Yangadou in northwest Congo-Brazzaville.
The CASA C-212 twin turboprop plane was carrying a total of 11people when it disappeared soon after taking off on Saturday.
The other Sundance personnel on the flight include the company's chairman, Geoff Wedlock, its chief executive, Don Lewis, directors John Jones and Craig Oliver, and the company secretary John Carr-Gregg.
Mr Talbot is Australia's 32nd-richest man with a personal fortune of $A965 million, a private jet, a large waterfront home in Brisbane and an apartment in Paris.
Although Sundance had access to his 19-seater Global Express 500 executive jet, which was parked at Yaounde, the makeshift airstrip at Yangadou meant the party had to charter a smaller plane, officials reported.
"The aircraft had on board 11 people, including nine passengers and two crew members, comprising six Australians, two French, an American and two Britons," Cameroon's Communications Minister Issa Thiroma Bakary told the AFP news agency.
He said the aircraft was operated by a Congo-Brazzaville company, Aero-Service, and chartered by Cam Iron, the Cameroon subsidiary of Sundance Resources.
Cameroon had assigned a C-130 Hercules and smaller Piper and Dornier aircraft to search for the plane, and asked local officials, communities and logging firms along its flight path for any clues that might help, he said.
Cameroonian President Paul Biya has set up a crisis panel to coordinate the search, which also involves the neighbouring country of Gabon as well Congo.
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, said his government was ''seriously concerned about their safety and wellbeing,''
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was sending consular officials to the search area to work with local authorities.
The department's high commissioner designate to the Nigerian capital, Abuja, had arrived in Cameroon and was ''managing the government's response on the ground',” Australian media have reported.
''One additional official from our high commission in Abuja, plus a specialist consular officer based in the Middle East, will travel to Cameroon as soon as is possible to support the government's response,'' a spokeswoman in Canberra said.
