None of the mainstream media outlets took a moment to actually look into the details of the Manitoba Securities Commission decision allowing 8 Crocus Fund Directors to walk away without being held accountable or expressing any remorse for allowing inflated shares in the labour fund to be sold without the required checks and balances being followed by the Board, that would have protected trusting Manitobans from being fleeced.
How did the MSC think that suspending their ability to do anything like it again -- for a year -- is any kind of sanction or protects the public?
We took the time to read it over.
Since not one newsroom seems to have actually named the Directors - can they be called guilty? I think they can because they admitted to breaching the Act by not adhering to the Prospectus - TGCTS will name names:
Charles Curtis, Peter Olfert, Waldron (Wally) Fox-Decent, Lea Baturin, Albert Beal, Diane Beresford, Sylvia Farley and Robert Hilliard.
It is a sickening reminder of how under the NDP white-collar crime that would result in a stint in the penitentary in the US is absolved in Manitobastan by compliant regulators after hearing pleas that 'the lawyers advised us' and 'the accounting firm said it was ok'. (Ever heard of Enron, any of you ?)
The "Reasons for Decision" is ONE WHOLE PARAGRAPH.
http://www.msc.gov.mb.ca/legal_docs/investigation/reasons/crocus.pdf
Wait till you hear excerpts from the Order, which includes:
- the dirty details of stalled Valuation approvals;
- backroom infighting between parties unnamed in the documentation (but who were longtime Crocus CEO Sherman Kreiner and new executives Chief Operating Officer Laurie Goldberg and Chief Investment Officer John Pelton - please note I mis-guessed the CIO in this narrative on this podcast as being Albert Black which will be corrected on the next podcast);
- and the pathetic excuses of the 8 directors subject to the Order whom, although all promoters of the Fund and highly educated professionals, were seemingly out of their depth on how to discharge their responsibilities properly when it came to actually running the Fund as Directors of the Board.
(Two remaining Directors, Ron Waugh and Robert Ziegler, will appear at a hearing at 1 PM on Wednesday, November 2 at the MSC offices.)
http://www.msc.gov.mb.ca/legal_docs/orders/6414_crocus.pdf
Listen to our walk-thru of the details, and in particular the discovery of a glaring irregularity in the documentation. And I mean glaring.
Also on the agenda today:
* The Simkin Centre pulled an Olga Fuga and declared the Annual General Meeting over when the tough questions about the abuse of the elderly and a closed-shop Board nomination process started piling up. This was a shameful way for a Jewish organization to abandon their duty to the community.
* The City of Winnipeg 311 Service, try though it might, cannot cover-up for the bloated bureaucracy, which has taken 6 weeks to figure out who is supposed to remove two discarded toilets ( left there in mid-August) from the lane behind Home Street in the west end.
* Don't forget tomorrow's special episode, focusing on the Air Canada memo fall-out and the relationship between the Downtown Biz and its critics, featuring a special interview with a citizen journalist who pulls no punches in describing the sad state of civic "debate" in Winnipeg and the dismissive attitude of the Biz to the community.
HERE IS THE LINK TO THE THURSDAY PODCAST:
http://tgctspod.podbean.com/2011/10/27/inside-the-crocus-settlement-8-directors-lined-up-to-agree-starting-the-day-after-ndp-re-elected/
email: tgcts1@gmail.com
@tgcts on Twitter
