QUESTION:
WHY DID THE BCSC ORIGINALLY ALLEGE YOU TOOK $5.45 MILLION DOLLARS FROM INVESTORS BY NOT ADVANCING FUNDS TO THE DEVELOPER IF YOU SAY THIS IS NOT TRUE?
ANSWER:
This literally is the million dollar question – during the lead up to the hearing I was given certain documents by the BCSC and was told they would be making their case out of these documents. I was told they had to make the case that was brought forward in the Notice of Hearing (“NOH”) that was issued on June 14, 2013 and they could not vary from those allegations. Among the allegations was that in both FCC and DCF, I did not advance the majority of the funds to the Developer – something that is stated in the Offering Memorandum(s) that would happen.
Reading through Staff’s NOH, the Press Release (or the subsequent newspaper articles written directly by the reporters after reading the BCSC Press Release) they clearly imply that I absconded with over $5.45 million dollars. The front page of the Vancouver Province newspaper on April 8, 2014 featured a close up picture of the Respondents face with the headline “Investor’s Millions Evaporate” splashed across the bottom. The problem with all this is that I knew I had NOT absconded with millions of dollars – it was physically impossible. And the problem that Staff at the BCSC soon discovered, is that relying on a Grade 2 summary calculation was not enough to prove their case. Again, Liz Chan (the lead investigator responsible for all the math brought into the Hearing) took the total money raised and subtracted the commissions and cheques that were written to the Developer and came up with this great big number that she took to her boss – the Executive Director. This is WHERE the number of $5.45 million came from and it was wrong to rely on this number.