The Ontario Court of Justice has found Glen Harper, president of
In a May 1999 Information to the Court, the Ontario Securities Commission alleged that Harper had sold 424,702 shares in Golden Rule, for proceeds of just over $4 million, between Jan. 3 and May 6, 1997, while possessing knowledge of material facts that had not been generally disclosed.
The Securities Act offence carries a maximum jail term of two years less a day and a maximum fine of three times the profit made or loss avoided through the insider trades. The OSC and the defence will make sentencing submissions Aug. 28. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 17. Harper is considering an appeal of the conviction.
The OSC has not yet specified the profit or loss figure it will submit at the sentencing hearing, but spokesman Frank Switzer told The Northern Miner “we certainly consider this [offence] to be at the top end of seriousness.”
At the time the trades were made, Golden Rule and affiliate
Subsequent check-sampling by an independent firm found that the gold values could not be duplicated and the gold was mainly in the coarse-size fraction of the samples. These results led the consulting firm, Associated Mining Consultants of Calgary, to conclude that “tampering [was] the most probable cause” for the earlier high values.
The Securities Commission charged that Harper, at the time he sold the shares, knew about the consulting firm’s results and about adverse results of the company’s own sampling. The companies released news of independent check-sampling on May 15, 1997.
Harper has resigned as president of five companies in the Calgary-based Golden Rule group, including Golden Rule, Hixon,
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