I thought there was something fishy about his $5M figure, it just didn't sound like a lot by today's standards, what's that, about a tankful of gas these days?

From the article,

"It is also possible that the Zabayar comments were from a much earlier time, perhaps from a period not long after the Las Cristinas mining contract was awarded to Crystallex in 2002, an event that was somewhat controversial at the time. If so, then those comments were repackaged by the manipulators and released as “new"