Harper gets year, $4m fine

Former Golden Rule Resources (GNU-T) president Glen Harper, convicted in mid-July of two counts of insider trading in the company, has been sentenced to a year in jail and a fine just under $4 million.

Harper was convicted of selling shares of Golden Rule while knowing unfavourable material facts about the company that had not been publicly disclosed. The $4-million figure represented the loss in Harper’s Golden Rule shares between the time he sold them and the time the adverse news was finally announced, plus 10%.

Harper, who resigned in mid-September as a director of Golden Rule and several affiliated companies, is appealing the conviction and was released on his own recognizance pending a decision in the appeal.

The Ontario Securities Commission told the court that Harper had been presented with trench-sampling results from the Stenpad exploration concession in Ghana, a property Golden Rule was exploring with associated company Hixon Gold Resources (HXG-V). The results contradicted earlier analyses that had shown high gold grades in the trenches.

A subsequent technical audit of the project concluded that the samples that returned high gold grades had been tampered with.

Conviction of insider trading offences under the Securities Act (a provincial statute, not part of the Criminal Code) carries a jail sentence of up to two years and a maximum fine of three times the “profit made or loss avoided” by the trader.