Baines’ world
Erwin Speckert’s B. C. company is listed as the owner of lake-front property, but Ingo Mueller and his wife live there and call it their own
An accused money launderer is listed as owner of a Naramata lakefront property, yet an admitted stock offender and his wife live there .
In previous columns, I noted that Swiss fiduciary Erwin Speckert has been closely associated with West Vancouver promoter Ingo Mueller.
Mueller has a regulatory history. In 2006, the B. C. Securities Commission suspended him from the B. C. securities market for three years after he admitted he had disseminated false information about a bulletin board company called Exotics. com Inc.
The U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission made similar allegations, which he settled in 2010 without admitting nor denying any wrongdoing, but nevertheless agreeing not to participate in any penny stock offering for the next five years.
BCSC enforcement staff recently accused Speckert of funnelling millions of dollars to an Abbotsford man, Colin McCabe, to secretly promote sketchy stocks quoted on the OTC Bulletin Board in the United States. A hearing is pending.
Manitoba RCMP have also charged Speckert with possessing and laundering the proceeds of an illegal gambling enterprise in Ontario after he was caught last year at a Winnipeg bus depot with $ 1.3 million in his backpack while en route to Vancouver. That case is also pending.
As noted in previous columns, Speckert and Mueller have been close associates. Among other things, Speckert was a co- director of Mueller’s private firm, St. Georges Capital Corp., until he ran into trouble with the BCSC.
I have also linked Speckert and Mueller to a $ 2.15- million lakefront residential property in Naramata.
The property, located at 4785 Mill Rd., is registered in the name of Naramata Golden Properties Ltd., whose sole director and officer is listed as Speckert.
However, I have been reliably informed that the property is used exclusively by Mueller and his wife, and that they refer to it as their property. This raises the question: Is Speckert simply acting as a front for Mueller?
If he is, it wouldn’t be the first time. As noted in my last two columns, the estranged wives of Vancouver- area promoters James Michie and Richard Coglon claimed that Speckert was helping them hide assets through companies he represented. Michie and Coglon denied they had any interest in the assets, but the court found otherwise.
I tried to ask Mueller whether he was the beneficial owner of the Naramata property, but he did not return my call Tuesday.
One of the bulletin board companies that the BCSC alleges Speckert and McCabe conspired to promote was Guinness Exploration Inc., which is closely associated with Coglon.
Guinness was being promoted on the basis of prospective gold claims in the Yukon, which it had acquired for cash and restricted shares from Eagle Trail Properties Inc., a private Saskatchewan company owned by Coglon and an associate, Robert Sim.
BCSC investigator David Salzano raised Coglon’s name while he interviewing Speckert about funding McCabe’s promotion of Guinness. ( Transcripts from that interview were tendered at a preliminary hearing into the matter.)
“And you know, there’s people I know who are involved with the company ( Guinness) that I think paid for it ( the promotion), and I think they’re people you might have heard of, like Richard Coglon or ( names one other individual),” Salzano said to Speckert.
“Door No. 1, so far,” Speckert replied.
When I called Coglon last week, he adamantly denied any involvement in the management or promotion of Guinness. He also denied he had any dealings with Speckert with respect to Guinness.
Speckert has also been involved in bulletin board companies with Ontario securities offender James Pincock.
In an August 2002 settlement agreement with the Ontario Securities Commission, Pincock admitted he had solicited at least $ 2 million from 150 investors, pooled the funds in offshore accounts, then used the proceeds to buy large blocks of shares from seven junior companies. He then broke up the blocks and distributed the shares to the investors, thereby circumventing minimum investment rules.
Pincock admitted he had not been registered to sell or advise in securities, or to act as a portfolio manager. He also admitted he had distributed the shares without filing a prospectus or having an exemption from prospectus requirements. For these offences, he was suspended from the Ontario securities market for five years.
He subsequently changed his name to James Werth Longshore.
When his suspension expired, Longshore began promoting a bulletin board company called Xtra- Gold Resources Corp., which is working on a gold project in Ghana. Significant shareholders included:
• G. M. Capital Partners Ltd., a Geneva- based firm owned by Michie. It owned six million shares.
• Alpine Atlantic Asset Management AG, a Zurich- based firm that provided asset management and protection services for its clients. Alpine was owned by G. M. Capital, Michie served as chairman and Speckert as a manager. It held just over 250,000 shares.
• Speckert’s close business associate, Mikkel Lind of Liechtenstein, who controlled just over one million shares through two companies based in St. Lucia in the Caribbean. ( Lind and Speckert are currently listed as co- directors of a private B. C. company called Fun City Properties Inc., business unknown.)
As always, the overarching question is, who were the beneficial owners of these shares?
Whoever they were, they stood to make big money.
Those shares, which they acquired for pennies each, peaked at $ 2.38 in December 2010, just after the company obtained a listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Since then, they have declined to 63 cents, nearly one- quarter their all- time high.