OSC

Interview with Bruce Livesey: Thieves of Bay Street

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The Current – April 13, 2012

Bruce Livesey

Are we immune from a Wall Street style meltdown? A controversial book raises doubts that our banking and financial system is somehow morally superior and more secure than our American neighbours. It suggests that not only are Canada's Captains of the money industry capable of corruption, the system does little to protect you from them.

When the financial and real estate markets melted down in 2008, Canada's banks became super heroes. They were the envy of the world celebrated models of responsibility and prudence. It seemed to suggest the worst economic crisis in half-a-century demonstrated how lucky we were to have our financial futures invested in this country.

Getting swindled in Canada

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Lorrie Goldstein – February 11, 2012

Why would we adopt the same lax regulatory regime for dealing with corporate fraudsters in Canada that allowed Wall Street to escape responsibility for the global economic crash it helped cause in 2008?

Bizarrely, the Ontario Securities Commission, Canada’s securities regulator by default since we don’t even have a national one, is urging the adoption of so-called “no contest” settlements here for major financial fraudsters.

Ontario securities regulator collects less than 1% of fines levied

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Jeff Gray – January 19, 2012

Admittedly, the figures put out this week by the Ontario Securities Commission look bad enough at first glance. Since 2005, the OSC has collected less than 1 per cent of the $73.36-million in fines it has imposed on fraudsters and other rule-breakers after defeating them in contested hearings.

The agency blames the lack of recovered money on the ability of bad guys to hide assets. It points out that it has had success with winning more and longer jail sentences for some offenders lately, and says it extends bans on trading and other activities for deadbeats who don’t pay up.

Loblaws takes stand on whistleblowers

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Barbara Shecter – January 9, 2012

A footnote in plans to beef up enforcement of Canada’s securities laws has caught the attention of the country’s biggest grocer.

Loblaw Cos. Ltd. and parent company George Weston Ltd. are urging the Ontario Securities Commission to “tread carefully” before implementing a program that would offer to pay a “bounty” to whistleblowers reporting on suspected misconduct at a company.

A black eye for Bay Street

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Richard Leblanc  – September 8, 2011

At a recent dinner in Toronto honouring Canadian corporate directors, Spencer Lanthier, a former member of the Bank of Canada’s board, told the crowd, “This city, this province, this country has a reputation of being the best location to carry out white-collar crime—corporate fraud—in the industrialized world.”

As if to underline Lanthier’s words, the Ontario Securities Commission last week made headlines with its allegations of malfeasance against Sino-Forest Corp., and an accompanying cease-trade order.

Securities fraudster gets 5 years

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Barbara Shecter – June 16, 2011

In a pair of cases that illustrate the difficulty of shutting down serial “boiler room” crimes, a man the Ontario Securities Commission has been pursuing since 2008 has been sentenced to nearly five years in jail.

Abraham Grossman was busy operating a second boiler room while he was in court defending against OSC allegations that he had operated the first one, says Karen Manarin, deputy director of enforcement at Canada’s biggest capital markets regulator.

The dark side of Canada's inheritance system

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Jacquie Mcnish and Paul Waldie – March 4, 2011

Paul Penna took every precaution when he decided to leave his $24-million estate to charity. Gravely ill with lung cancer, the 73-year old mining promoter hired a respected Bay Street estate lawyer to draft his will in 1996.

He then appointed a valued colleague and his long-time banker to be trustees of a fortune he built as the founder of Agnico-Eagle Gold Mines Ltd. Except for the $1-million he set aside for his wife of 43 years, he left the bulk of the childless couple’s savings to about a dozen Jewish, medical and community causes.

Book excerpt: A nation of swindlers

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Swindlers

Swindlers: cons & cheats and how to protect your investments from them – By Al Rosen and Mark Rosen

THIS EXCERPT IS NOT LONGER AVAILABLE DUE TO LEGAL ACTION

Media Chill

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National Post graph

In the BCE case, the OSC has the power to compel journalists to reveal sources

Jeffrey G. MacIntosh – August 4, 2010

Looking for a formula to commit securities frauds with no downside risk? Look no further. Here’s how it’s done.

It’s really quite simple. Load up on put or call options in a given company’s stock (depending on how you plan to manipulate the market), and then, on a promise of confidentiality, pass false and misleading information about that company to a reporter. Cash your options in when the price moves. Then sip pina coladas on a beach of your choice.

The Incredible True Story Of Mr. Markarian

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One man's battle against CIBC exposes the billion-dollar scams behind our country’s “stable” financial sector.

Bruce Livesey, Maisonneuve magazine – April 9, 2010

Serge Létourneau was getting impatient. It was February 14, 2005, and he was in a courtroom at Montreal’s Palais de Justice, grilling Thomas Monahan over his decision to axe an employee four years earlier. Monahan was the forty-eight-year-old head of CIBC Wood Gundy, and Létourneau was representing retired businessman Haroutioun Markarian, who was suing the brokerage house in order to retrieve $1.5 million it took from him under very questionable circumstances.

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