The perfect crime...is professional organized crime

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The perfect accompaniment to the perfect crime is a system of criminals who cannot be arrested (corporations) and CAN afford enough help to gain a deferred prosecution agreement. I could be wrong in my assumptions...

Remediation Agreements: A Rational Process that is in the Public Interest

Capital Perspectives - Ottawa Newsletter
SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

Prosecuting a corporation for criminal offences has long been criticized as potentially giving rise to a number of unfair and unwarranted results. Usually the wrong-doing is attributed to one or two individuals who have acted on their own and often well into the past and are no longer associated with the company.

By prosecuting the entire company, a multitude of completely innocent individuals can be harmed. Investors can lose their investments, employees can lose their jobs, retired employees might lose their pensions. A criminal conviction of a corporation can have far-reaching repercussions, including being debarred from bidding on government contracts domestically and internationally. Many non-government requests for proposals now also have an integrity requirement for companies submitting bids.

To address these unfair effects resulting from convicting corporations of criminal offences, most G7 countries have adopted some form of deferred prosecution agreement provisions in their criminal law.

Last year, Canada finally joined the U.S., the U.K., France and other European countries when Parliament passed Part XXII.1 of the Criminal Code, which provides for a Remediation Agreement regime – Canada's version of deferred prosecution agreements

Opposition MPs in the House of Commons have likened these changes to being "soft" on white-collar crime as they allow corporations to "avoid jail time." Of course, corporations can't do "jail time." Usually, the most onerous penalty faced by a corporation is the loss of business resulting from a criminal conviction.

The Purpose of Canada's Regime

S.715.31 of the Criminal Code sets out the purpose of the regime and lists a number of objectives:

715.31 The purpose of this Part is to establish a remediation agreement regime that is applicable to organizations alleged to have committed an offence and that has the following objectives:

(a) to denounce an organization's wrongdoing and the harm that the wrongdoing has caused to victims or to the community;

(b) to hold the organization accountable for its wrongdoing through effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties;

(c) to contribute to respect for the law by imposing an obligation on the organization to put in place corrective measures and promote a compliance culture;

(d) to encourage voluntary disclosure of the wrongdoing;

(e) to provide reparations for harm done to victims or to the community; and

(f) to reduce the negative consequences of the wrongdoing for persons — employees, customers, pensioners and others — who did not engage in the wrongdoing, while holding responsible those individuals who did engage in that wrongdoing.
S. 715.32(1) sets out a number of conditions which must be met before a prosecutor may enter into the agreement. They are:

(a) the prosecutor is of the opinion that there is a reasonable prospect of conviction with respect to the offence;

(b) the prosecutor is of the opinion that the act or omission that forms the basis of the offence did not cause and was not likely to have caused serious bodily harm or death, or injury to national defence or national security, and was not committed for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with, a criminal organization or terrorist group;

(c) the prosecutor is of the opinion that negotiating the agreement is in the public interest and appropriate in the circumstances; and

(d) the Attorney General has consented to the negotiation of the agreement.

Considerations for the Prosecutor

Even if the conditions are met, a remediation agreement is not automatic. Among the several factors the Code requires the prosecutor to consider before offering to negotiate an agreement are:

Whether the organization has taken disciplinary action, including termination of employment, against any person who was involved in the act or omission
Whether the organization has made reparations or taken other measures to remedy the harm caused by the act or omission and to prevent the commission of similar acts or omissions
Whether the organization has identified or expressed a willingness to identify any person involved in wrongdoing related to the act or omission
The Code also directs that any agreement negotiated must include:

An admission of responsibility
A provision for reparation of any harm done, if not already made
Monetary penalties
An undertaking to cooperate with the prosecution in any related investigations or prosecutions
Once the agreement has been negotiated, it is submitted to a judge of the Superior Court for approval. The judge must be satisfied that the agreement is in the public interest before it is approved.

Upon Approval of an Agreement

Once the court has made an approval order, the charges against the company are stayed pending the completion of the terms of the agreement. If the company fails to comply with the terms of the agreement, the prosecutor can apply to the court to terminate the approval order and the criminal prosecution will resume. When the company has successfully completed all the terms of the agreement, the prosecutor applies to the court for a declaration that the terms of the agreement have been met. If the Court is satisfied that is the case, the court will issue an order staying the proceedings against the company for any offence to which the agreement applies and the proceedings are deemed never to have been commenced and no other proceedings may be initiated against the company for the same offence.

Not an 'Easy Ride'

Remediation agreements have received some bad press recently as a result of the SNC Lavalin affair. However, no agreement would be negotiated unless the individual culprits are no longer associated with the company and procedures have been put in place to substantially reduce the chance of any further offences being committed by other employees.

Rather than giving corporate crime an easy ride as many commentators have suggested, remediation agreements are a rational process to ensure corporate compliance and accountability, which is in the public interest, and, at the same time, to limit the harm to innocent individuals.

Patrick McCann is White Collar Defence and Investigations Counsel with the Fasken Ottawa office, representing clients in all trial and appellate courts in Ontario, and the Supreme Court of Canada. Previously, Patrick practised at the forefront of Canadian criminal law for over 40 years.

[admin]

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fa ... mgaard.htm

FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, SEPTEMBER 2019, VOL. 56, NO. 3 PDF VERSION
The Rise of Phantom Investments
Empty corporate shells in tax havens undermine tax collection in advanced, emerging market, and developing economies

Jannick Damgaard, Thomas Elkjaer, and Niels Johannesen


According to official statistics, Luxembourg, a country of 600,000 people, hosts as much foreign direct investment (FDI) as the United States and much more than China. Luxembourg’s $4 trillion in FDI comes out to $6.6 million a person. FDI of this size hardly reflects brick-and-mortar investments in the minuscule Luxembourg economy. So is something amiss with official statistics or is something else at play?

FDI is often an important driver for genuine international economic integration, stimulating growth and job creation and boosting productivity through transfers of capital, skills, and technology. Therefore, many countries have policies to attract more of it. However, not all FDI brings capital in service of productivity gains. In practice, FDI is defined as cross-border financial investments between firms belonging to the same multinational group, and much of it is phantom in nature—investments that pass through empty corporate shells. These shells, also called special purpose entities, have no real business activities. Rather, they carry out holding activities, conduct intrafirm financing, or manage intangible assets—often to minimize multinationals’ global tax bill. Such financial and tax engineering blurs traditional FDI statistics and makes it difficult to understand genuine economic integration.

'Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich'

Better data are needed to understand where, by whom, and why $40 trillion in FDI is being channeled around the world.

Combining the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s detailed FDI data with the global coverage of the IMF’s Coordinated Direct Investment Survey, a new study (Damgaard, Elkjaer, and Johannesen, forthcoming) creates a global network that maps all bilateral investment relationships—disentangling phantom FDI from genuine FDI.

Interestingly, a few well-known tax havens host the vast majority of the world’s phantom FDI. Luxembourg and the Netherlands host nearly half. And when you add Hong Kong SAR, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Singapore, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Ireland, and Mauritius to the list, these 10 economies host more than 85 percent of all phantom investments.

Why and how does this handful of tax havens attract so much phantom FDI? In some cases, it is a deliberate policy strategy to lure as much foreign investment as possible by offering lucrative benefits—such as very low or zero effective corporate tax rates. Even if the empty corporate shells have no or few employees in the host economy and do not pay corporate taxes, they still contribute to the local economy by buying tax advisory, accounting, and other financial services, as well as by paying registration and incorporation fees. For the tax havens in the Caribbean, these services account for the main share of GDP, alongside tourism.

In Ireland, the corporate tax rate has been lowered substantially from 50 percent in the 1980s to 12.5 percent today. In addition, some multinationals take advantage of loopholes in Irish law by using innovative tax engineering techniques with creative nicknames like “double Irish with a Dutch sandwich,” which involves transfers of profits between subsidiaries in Ireland and the Netherlands with tax havens in the Caribbean as the typical final destination. These tactics achieve even lower tax rates or avoid taxes altogether. Despite the tax cuts, Ireland’s revenues from corporate taxes have gone up as a share of GDP because the tax base has grown significantly, in large part from massive inflows of foreign investment. This strategy may be helpful to Ireland, but it erodes the tax bases in other economies. The global average corporate tax rate was cut from 40 percent in 1990 to about 25 percent in 2017, indicating a race to the bottom and pointing to a need for international coordination.


Globally, phantom investments amount to an astonishing $15 trillion, or the combined annual GDP of economic powerhouses China and Germany. And despite targeted international attempts to curb tax avoidance—most notably the G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative and the automatic exchange of bank account information within the Common Reporting Standard (CRS)—phantom FDI keeps soaring, outpacing the growth of genuine FDI. In less than a decade, phantom FDI has climbed from about 30 percent to almost 40 percent of global FDI (see chart). This growth is unique to FDI. According to Lane and Milesi-Ferretti (2018), FDI positions have grown faster than world GDP since the global financial crisis, whereas cross-border positions in portfolio instruments and other investments have not.

While phantom FDI is largely hosted by a few tax havens, virtually all economies—advanced, emerging market, and low-income and developing—are exposed to the phenomenon. Most economies invest heavily in empty corporate shells abroad and receive substantial investments from such entities, with averages across all income groups exceeding 25 percent of total FDI.

Investments in foreign empty shells could indicate that domestically controlled multinationals engage in tax avoidance. Similarly, investments received from foreign empty shells suggest that foreign-controlled multinationals try to avoid paying taxes in the host economy. Unsurprisingly, an economy’s exposure to phantom FDI increases with the corporate tax rate.

Better data for better policies
Globalization creates new challenges for macroeconomic statistics. Today, a multinational company can use financial engineering to shift large sums of money across the globe, easily relocate highly profitable intangible assets, or sell digital services from tax havens without having a physical presence. These phenomena can hugely impact traditional macroeconomic statistics—for example, inflating GDP and FDI figures in tax havens. Prominent cases include Irish GDP growth of 26 percent in 2015, following some multinationals’ relocation of intellectual property rights to Ireland, and Luxembourg’s status as one of the world’s largest FDI hosts. To get better data on a globalized world, economic statistics also need to adapt.

The new global FDI network is useful to identify which economies host phantom investments and their counterparts, and it gives a clearer understanding of globalization patterns. Such data offer greater insight to analysts and can guide policymakers in their attempt to address international tax competition.

The taxation agenda has gained traction among the G20 economies in recent years. The BEPS and CRS initiatives are examples of the international community’s efforts to tackle weaknesses in the century-old tax design, but the issues of tax competition and taxing rights remain largely unaddressed. However, this seems to be changing with emerging widespread agreement on the need for significant reforms. Indeed, this year the IMF put forward various alternatives for a revised international tax architecture, ranging from minimum taxes to allocation of taxing rights to destination economies. No matter which road policymakers choose, one fact remains clear: international cooperation is the key to dealing with taxation in today’s globalized economic environment.

JANNICK DAMGAARD is currently advisor to the executive director in the IMF’s Office of the Nordic-Baltic Executive Director. Most of this research was carried out in his previous role as senior economist at the National Bank of Denmark. THOMAS ELKJAER is a senior economist in the IMF’s Statistics Department, and NIELS JOHANNESEN is a professor of economics at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Economic Behaviour and Inequality.

The views expressed here are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the institutions with which they are affiliated.

References:
Damgaard, Jannick, Thomas Elkjaer, and Niels Johannesen. Forthcoming. “What Is Real and What Is Not in the Global FDI Network?” IMF Working Paper, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC.

Lane, Philip R., and Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti. 2018. “The External Wealth of Nations Revisited: International Financial Integration in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.” IMF Economic Review 66 (1): 189–222.

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fa ... mgaard.htm

[admin]

How perfect would it be....if protective agencies of the Canadian government were active handmaids in the coverup of financial abuses of millions of Canadians?

Here is a story from 2019 which illustrates just that kind of corruption/collusion.

BREAKING NEWS
CBC Go Public Exposes FCAC Deception of the Public
The Federal Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) is co-operating with the banks to cover up wrongdoing that is fleecing the public. Is Government aware of this collusion?

Canadians are finally learning the truth and it is ugly. SIPA has known for decades but media was reluctant to expose the Big Banks until Go Public lifted the lid on Pandora's Box in March 2017 and continued with additional disclosures as thousands of Canadians came forward to expose the truth.

This latest exposure is explosive! The Federal Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) is a Government regulator for the banks. Finally CBC Go Public has exposed that the FCAC is colluding with the banks to deceive the Canadian public.

Read the CBC news article >> https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fcac-bank-report-on-sales-tactics-weakened-1.5091115

Deceptive Practices
On March 29th, 2017, CBC Go Public was featured on the National with Peter Mansbridge. That program included Larry Elford, a SIPA Advisory Committee Member, explaining the investment industry deception of the public by calling their commission sales representatives Advis"ors" rather than Advis"ers" as defined in Securities Acts. It is available on YouTube for viewing >>

Now CBC has done it again.

CBC’s “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” produced a program that aired on December 4th, 2018. Part way through at the 11:50 minute mark, Mark Critch does a skit on the registration deception of the investment industry calling their commission sales persons ADVISORS to evade the responsibilities imposed on ADVISERS by Securities Acts. The program may be viewed here >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH0UGSG2wX0

For convenience, the segment on this deceptive practice has been extracted. In this 1 minute 48 second version Mark Critch explains clearly and concisely how the public is deceived by false titles and provides absurd comparisons to drive the message home (view clip >>).

Special Report
CBC Go Public Investigation into Big Banks
CBC's Go Public program is prying open Pandora's Box in an investigation into the selling practices of the major Canadian banks.

Their CBC TV programs have revealed how the banks really operate and the pressures placed on employees to upsell products and services to maximize bank profits. On March 29th CBC Go Public was the lead story on The National with Peter Mansbridge. It was this program that lifted the lid on Pandora’s Box and revealed how the public is being deceived. It also announced SIPA's "Web of Deception" Report which details some of the deceptive practices.

Most recent reports: (links to each report listed below are found at SIPA.ca)

April 10, 2019 - Bank Regulators Report
Researchers Ken Rubin and Paul Thomas use Access to Information to review what appears to be collusion between regulator and banks to deceive public.
September 16 "Controversial commissions: DIY investors fight back against trailer fees"
Go Public exposes how banks are cheating DIY investors with mutual funds. Investors fight back with Class Actions
June 12 "Bank Bosses Questioned at FINA inquiry" SIPA wants full public inquiry
June 1 "Finance Committee Hearings Start June 5 into Practices Revealed by Go Public"
May 31 "Forging Documents Reportedly Common" (The National)
May 31 "Document Forgery Common in Financial Industry"
April 20 "Canadians want Government to protect savings - CARP Poll"
April 17 "Banks Prioritizing Sales Quotas Over Customers"
April 17 "Canada is in the Dark Ages: Lax Laws Put Your Interests Last"
April 6 "Sales Targets Should Be Scrapped"
March 29 "Deceptive Employee Titles"
March 29 "I Feel Duped" Go Public lifts the lid on Pandora's Box. Mind blowing revelation of industry deception of Canadian consumers
Summaries of the earlier broadcasts can be read at these links:

Employees at Canada's 5 Big Banks Speak Out
Bank Employees Admit to Breaking the Law
Call Centre Employees for Banks Reveal Sales Pressures
Teller Says Customers 'Pay the Price'
CBC Go Public also have another story rolling out (online, radio, CBC News Network and the National), so check your TV and radio schedules and check online in case you miss the broadcasts. A link will be provided here as soon as available.

If you have a story to tell please contact Go Public or contact SIPA for further information. Please add your voice to the growing response from fellow Canadians.

Small Investor Protection Association



About SIPA
The current investment industry regulatory system does not provide adequate protection for the small investor.

SIPA is a voice for those small investors -- Canadians who have investments from a few thousand dollars to several million dollars, but who do not influence the market or individual share prices and who do not have a financial manager on staff.

A non-profit organization supported by members and private donations, SIPA prepares and submits reports to government and regulators, tracks industry fraud, and does its best to keep the small investor informed. Learn more about SIPA's priorities.

SIPA asks members and the public to help make a difference by taking action:

Contact your member of parliament
Write to your local newspaper
Write TV and radio personalities and radio stations
Call radio and TV talk shows
Spread news to your friends and contacts
Make a donation to SIPA to ensure sustainability
SIPA thanks all those individual investor advocates and small investors who have devoted time and effort to help make a difference.

Find out more about SIPA >> www.SIPA.ca

[admin]

CDN securities administrators - our industry controlled 10 Prov / 3 Terr securities commissions - have knowingly allowed CRM2 costs disclosure transparencies to be designed, delivered and presented in order to keep consumer—investors dumbed down . . .
versus
. . . them being uniformly standardized - uniformly designed, presented and delivered for no-brainer enlightening ease of simple apples to apples comparison purposes in order to achieve a “Six-Sigma” required standard of individual consumer—investor financial literacy education and retained knowledge.

https://www.investmentexecutive.com/new ... rs-report/

CRM2 fee disclosures fail to enlighten, empower investors: report

Many investors don’t understand what they’re paying based on the annual fee reports

By: James LangtonAugust 19, 201912:32

New research into investment fee disclosures mandated under the Client Relationship Model (CRM2) reforms finds that investors still don’t understand what they’re paying, or what they should do about it.

A report released Monday by the Ontario Securities Commission’s (OSC) Investor Office, which was prepared by U.K.-based behavioural economics firm Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), finds that many investors don’t understand what they’re paying based on the annual fee reports required by CRM2.

In particular,

the research indicates that many investors don’t understand that the reports only show dealer fees, and don’t include product costs.
It also says most don’t understand the concept of embedded compensation, such as trailer fees.

“Indirect fees, like commissions paid to investment firms by fund managers, create real confusion among investors,” the report says. “Most of our qualitative research participants did not readily grasp the relationship between investment fund managers and investment firms and therefore how indirect charges work.”

The report finds that the language used in most fee reports is not intuitive, and that some investors have a hard time grasping even basic terms.

“In our interviews, almost all participants had never heard of or didn’t understand terms like deferred sales charge (DSC), trailing commissions, and third-party compensation,” the report says. “Even the terms ‘compensation’ and ‘commission’ were unclear to many interviewees. This problem is made worse by the inconsistent use of terminology across investment firms.”

Ultimately, the research finds that annual fee reports fail BIT’s so-called “flip” test.

Code: Select all

“In the flip test you put a communication face down then flip it over. If you can’t understand the purpose within seconds of flipping it over, it has failed the flip test,”

the report explains.

In addition to not understanding the annual fee reports, the firm says that many investors may underestimate the impact of the investment costs that are disclosed. Many also don’t have any basis for determining whether their costs are fair or not, and may not be able to act on the information that they receive.

The report includes a list of 24 recommendations to improve the quality of, and investor comprehension of, fee disclosure.

“We found that a simple summary of the most critical information, supplemented with a more detailed description of fees that included explanations of why those fees were incurred, was most effective in boosting comprehension,” it says.

It also suggests that other tactics, such as developing benchmarks that investors could use to test the fairness of their fees, could be useful in making fee disclosure meaningful to investors.

However, the report stresses that the challenge facing regulators goes beyond just making CRM2 disclosure more understandable to investors.

“To capitalize on the promise of CRM2, the sector needs to consider how to support investors in moving from understanding to action,” the report says.

“Supporting investors in making better-informed choices will mean helping them understand their options and reducing the friction in taking action.”

The OSC calls on industry firms to review the report and to consider testing some of the tactics outlined by BIT.

“This behavioural insights research study shows how plain language and attention to disclosure design can place investors in a better position to make informed decisions about their finances,” said Tyler Fleming, director of the OSC’s Investor Office, in a statement. “Improving disclosure can be an effective way to enhance the investor experience.”

[admin]

Letter of complaint to the Ontario Ombudsman, April 15, 2019 (No response received as of June 22, 2019)



April 15, 2019

Office of the Ombudsman of Ontario
Bell Trinity Square
483 Bay Street, 10th Floor, South Tower
Toronto, ON
M5G 2C9  info@ombudsman.on.ca

Re: Request for a Public Investigation into The Ontario Securities Commission

Dear PAUL DUBÉ, OMBUDSMAN,

This letter is to inform the Ombudsman of an Ontario government agency which consistently acts contrary to the public interest, resulting in grave financial harm to society while the agency wears a cloak of protecting the public interest. These acts appear impossible to justify under the OSC’s mandate and they seem quite inappropriate for a government agency.

In light of the SNC-Lavalin affair and of the former Attorney General's position on the impropriety of deferred prosecutions, etc.,  I believe this request for an investigation may be timely, especially since CBC revealed in this past week that the reporting and results of previous Parliamentary inquiry were allowed to be altered and/or redacted by financial industry participants who were the subject of the public complaints. **

The following are some acts by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) which appear to endanger both the principles and the public protection mandate of the OSC:

1. Ignoring public protective principles, rules or laws which has the effect of enriching the financial industry while doing financial injury to the public.

2. Allowing laws to be “exempted” (granting permissions to skirt the law) for industry members, without public notice about the removal of public protective laws, without transparent public process, and without public warning to investors who invest with advisers or in investments which are “exempt” from the law.

3. Evidence of refusal to interact with the public, and instead referring the public to industry-funded “self” regulatory bodies This adds layers and barriers between the public interest and impartial protection of the public.

4. Reluctance or refusal to enforce certain Securities Act Laws, even when the OSC is notified of financial industry/or OSC violations which are harming the public.

5. Altering documents on OSC websites, and redacting of public informative terms and definitions. Revision and deletion of historical records to benefit industry participants, while adding confusion to the information given to the public.


Some corporate entities which have received exemption from laws in Ontario include each of the major banks, Bombardier, SNC, Goldman Sachs, Valeant Pharmaceutical, Sun Life, National Bank, Concrete Equities, Sub Prime Mortgage investments etc.. The list runs into thousands of exemptions to laws which the public is not aware of.

It is proving dangerous to our shared society when our financial industry is allowed to select, to pay and to influence its own private watch dogs.

I offer to assist you in the documentation, substantiation and understanding of issues in this letter, in hopes that regulatory practices which act contrary to the public interest can enter into public and Legislature awareness.
 
I trust that the Ombudsman will undertake an investigation as soon as possible. If too many institutions fail to act when called upon we run the risk of becoming a failed state, which would be a great loss to this wonderful country.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/failed-state
 “Failed state......it cannot project authority over its territory and peoples....Its citizens no longer believe that their government is legitimate, and the state becomes illegitimate in the eyes of the international community.....A failed state is composed of feeble and flawed institutions.....the legislature, judiciary, bureaucracy,....have lost their capacity and professional independence.....Failed states create an environment of flourishing corruption.....where honest economic activity cannot flourish.
 

Yours Truly
Larry Elford, former CFP, CIM, FCSI, Associate Portfolio Manager, retired
Lethbridge, Alberta

** CBC Bank regulator's report on aggressive sales tactics weakened after government, and banks, reviewed drafts
Documents reveal 'cosy' relationship between the government, the banking industry and its watchdog
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fcac-b ... gKc-K-G3p4

[admin]

June 19, 2019

Submission to the Alberta Public Interest Commission:
Public Interest Commissioner
9925 – 109 Street, Suite 700
Edmonton, Alberta T5K 2J8

Dear Commissioner,

1. What if a government-legislated regulator were to be financially captured by the industry they regulate?
2. What if this allowed persons with less education and experience than it takes to become a licensed hairdresser, to falsely claim professional “advisor” status on your life savings?
3. Could this regulator be aiding private financial interests to take advantage of the public?
4. Could they do this when the public money involved could be $3/4 Trillion, and the public harm may be 2%-3% of that ($15 to $23 Billion)?
5. What if this could cut in half, the future life savings of many people who invest under this conflicted-style of regulation?

This is a formal request for The Alberta Public Interest Commission to investigate alleged violations of the public interest by the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC).

One of the ways that stockbrokers and commission selling agents for investment dealers can easily make billions of dollars, is simply by having millions of investors who give absolute trust and confidence to those sales agents.

The industry learned shortly after the crash of 1987, that the easy way to gain the absolute trust of investment customers is to lie to them (by title inflation), or mislead them into a false belief that the commission sales agent is actually a professionally registered “Advisor”. I know this because I was there and watched it happen.

Investors are deceived by this “title inflation” and assume that they are dealing with trusted professionals, much like a Doctor, Lawyer or Engineer. This is most often not the case, but investors are easily assured that the regulator in Alberta would never allow fraudulent misrepresentation into the management of their life savings.

The problem with earning trust using a false pretense is the risk of being caught in a fraud. This complaint to the Public Interest Commissioner is about that fraud and the false pretenses that are allowed or ignored by the Alberta Securities Commission, a body which is empowered by public legislation.

This industry has learned that the easy way to prevent their fraud from being exposed is to pay millions of dollars to influence and control the regulatory bodies that “police” the industry, and who purportedly protect the public interest.

This is a formal request for The Alberta Public Interest Commission to investigate these alleged violations of the public interest by the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC).

On pages 2-4 are twelve points which summarize the issue, (in bold below) followed by 23 pages of report which takes each one of those twelve points, and provides facts, sources, and an explanation of their relevance to investors and to investor protection.


1. The ASC allows approximately 30,000 commission sales representatives (Dealing Representatives) to falsely represent themselves to Alberta investors as if they were registered as professional Investment Advisers (Advising Representatives). 97% of these self-labeled “Advisers” (or “Advisors”) do not hold the “Advising Representative” registration. This is a violation of Alberta Securities Act section 100, on “Representation”, as well as ASC rules, laws and regulations on misrepresentation, fraud, etc. “We strive to protect investors from improper, misleading or fraudulent practices while allowing our capital market to thrive.” (page 7, ASC Annual Report 2018)
Details on page 4

2. Misrepresented financial professionals can use false pretenses to influence and to harm Alberta Investors. Bruce Engel of Engel and Associates, criminal lawyers in Ottawa, defines and explains false pretenses thusly: “To commit fraud means to deprive somebody of something by deceit or a falsehood and to induce a state of mind through a specific course of action.”
Details on page 9

3. The difference in professional duty of care, between a Dealing Representative (Salesperson) and an Advising Representative (Adviser) is sufficient to cut the life savings of Alberta investors by 50% to 75%. The Dealing Rep (Salesperson) registration requires 90 days experience, while the Advising Representative takes multiple years of supervised investment management experience.
Details on page 13

4. Millions of Albertans who save and invest, assume that the ASC is a government regulator and that it must meet the following ASC public promise: “The ASC is responsible for maintaining the integrity of Canada's second-largest capital market. We ensure a fair and level playing field for investors and oversee the conduct of market participants.”
Details on page 16

5. The interests of ASC’s funding providers are often diametrically opposed to the interests of investors. Thus, the public is not informed that the ASC is funded by the industry they claim to regulate, and not by the Government as most investors assume. Private financial interests can thus make Billions of dollars by not fairly, fully informing the public.
Details on page 16

6. Albertans hold investments worth roughly $780 Billion. Public harms of 2%-3% annually on this $3/4 Trillion dollar pool of capital would produce $15.6 to 23.4 Billion in fees and/or commissions to the industry, and loss to the public. Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) Chair Maureen Jensen is on record as saying: “The impact of these fees on investor returns is significant,” she said. “Investors experiencing this kind of outcome on a consistent basis would never break even and would, in fact, be worse off.”
Details on page 17

7. With possible annual financial harm to Alberta society in the $15.6 to 23.4 Billion per year range, this exceeds not only the cost of the Fort Mac fire disaster at $3.6 Billion, but exceeds the financial harm done by all measured criminal acts in the province. (Source: Justice Canada and Stats Canada estimates of total measured crime).
Details on page 19

8. The ASC has turned a blind eye to this widespread public deception for many years, despite being made aware of the negligent and false misrepresentations and despite increased media coverage of same. Due to years of ASC willful blindness, the harms to Albertans could add to Hundreds of Billions of dollars in financial damage to the public, and Hundreds of Billions of unjust enrichment for private financial interests who fund the ASC.
Details on page 20

9. Perhaps in response to disclosures such as this as well as increased media coverage, the ASC has recently begun advertising campaigns which include mis-information, and omissions of the most essential information of importance to investors. This serves to further confuse and deceive the public.
Details on page 21

10. Canada’s most respected investigative journalist, Bruce Livesey, revealed in 2019, “You have to understand that white collar crime is legal in Canada”.
Details on page 22

11. In this complaint I suggest to the Public Interest Commissioner, “Please understand that white collar collusion or cooperation allows wealthy private financial interests to ignore our laws”. In a second planned letter to the Alberta Public Interest Commission I will shine a light into the practice of this regulator (ASC) also allowing private financial interests to purchase exemptions, something which allows them to quietly skirt laws and flaunt public protections.
Details on page 24

12. Purchase of exemptions to Securities Act law is like having the ability to purchase a “deferred prosecution agreement” in advance of committing a violation of the law. The granting of exemptions to public protective laws, to private financial interests seeking to skirt those laws for higher profits, is a separate issue of public interest concern which involves the ASC and will be dealt with separately as further evidence of bias against the public interest by this Alberta Securities Commission.
Details on page 25

============================================

1. The ASC allows approximately 30,000 commission sales representatives (Dealing Representatives) to falsely represent themselves to Alberta investors as if they were registered as professional investment advisers (Advising Representatives). 97% of these so-called “Advisers” (or “Advisors”) do not hold the “Advising Representative” registration.

This is a violation by the ASC of Alberta Securities Act section 100 titled “Representation”, as well as any ASC rules, laws and regulations on misrepresentation, fraud, etc. “We strive to protect investors from improper, misleading or fraudulent practices while allowing our capital market to thrive.” (page 7, ASC Annual Report 2018)


FACT:
In this Act,
“Adviser” means a person or company engaging in or holding itself out as engaging in the business of advising in securities or derivatives;

SOURCE:
http://www.qp.alberta.ca/documents/Acts/s04.pdf

RELEVANCE:
The first section of the Alberta Securities Act states clearly the definition of an Adviser, lest there be any doubt.

FACT:
The ASC turns a blind eye to infractions whereby individuals who are not registered as “Adviser”

SOURCE:
Representation or holding out of registration Alberta Securities Act Section 100(1)

A person or company shall not represent that the person or company is registered under this Act unless
(a) the representation is true, and
(b) in making the representation, the person or company specifies the person or company’s category of registration under this Act and the regulations.
(2) A person or company shall not make a statement about something that a reasonable investor would consider important in deciding whether to enter into or maintain a trading or advising relationship with the person or company if the statement is untrue or omits information necessary to prevent the statement from being
false or misleading in the circumstances in which it is made.

Section 100 is found on page 100 of the Alberta Securities Act, web link below:
http://www.qp.alberta.ca/documents/Acts/s04.pdf


RELEVANCE:
False Representation of a person’s registration category at the Alberta Securities Commission or at the Canadian Securities Administrators (Canada-wide umbrella organization of all Canadian Provincial and Territorial Securities Commissions is not allowed under subsection (a) of Section 100 of the Act.

100(1) A person or company shall not represent that the person or company is registered under this Act unless
(a) the representation is true

By misrepresenting oneself as an Advisor or Adviser to the public, when not holding the registration category implied by either of these titles (or spelling variations), subsection (b) of Section 100 of the Act is not met.

(b) in making the representation, the person or company specifies the person or company’s category of registration under this Act and the regulations.

By concealing a Dealing Representative registration category, and falsely proclaiming oneself to be an “Advisor”, an “Adviser”, or an “Advising Representative”, the representative has made a statement about something that any reasonable person would definitely want to know. 

(2) A person or company shall not make a statement about something that a reasonable investor would consider important in deciding whether to enter into or maintain a trading or advising relationship with the person or company if the statement is untrue or omits information necessary to prevent the statement from being false or misleading in the circumstances in which it is made.

FACT:
The Alberta Securities Act prohibits false representation

SOURCE:
Section 100 of The Alberta Securities Act

FACT:
The ASC ignores the “representation” provisions of the Alberta Securities Act whether on a “one registrant at a time” basis or in a systemic manner involving tens of thousands of violations at once.

SOURCE #1:
A search of the first three registrants in the category of “Dealing Representative” (Salesperson) turns up three persons who are not registered as “Advisors” and yet purport to the public that they are so registered



SOURCE #2:
A search of ALL registrants in the category of “Dealing Representative” (Salesperson) reveals over 28,000 persons and other than a few exempt market dealers, only a handful out of the 28,000 registrants have been found to public represent themselves as a “Dealing Representative” as the Securities Act requires.

SOURCE #3:
When discussing this with an ASC official at an ASC trade show booth, the official expressed dismay and disbelief that none of the registrants were representing their registration categories properly. When shown the business cards of investment representative booths at that very trade show, and shown that each Salesperson (Dealing Representative) was misrepresenting themselves as if they met the “Advising Representative” standards of registration, the response was surprise.

When follow up communication with the ASC official ensued to see if there would be any enforcement of the Alberta Securities Act, there was complete silence.

Below is a copy of one email correspondence with the ASC on this matter: No action was taken by the ASC.

Sent: April-17-16 3:07 PM
To: larry elford; Don Rodgers
Subject: Re: Complaint to Don Rogers and ASC Complaints, regarding deception and license misrepresentation contrary to Alberta Securities Act and harmful to the public interest

Dear ASC.
As nearly one month has passed since initiating a complaint with the ASC about “Dealing Representative” misrepresentation (license misrepresentation), I was hoping to obtain a reply indicating receipt of the complaint, and perhaps some indication if anything is to be done.

I thank you in advance for your reply to this consumer protection issue.

Larry Elford

RELEVANCE:
The ASC track record is to ignore, rather than to enforce, violations of license and/or registration category representation laws, and this appears to be a breach of duty by ASC officials to enforce the Securities Act in a manner that protects the Alberta public, as well as a possible Breach of the Public Trust. It essentially allows thousands of investment sales representatives to commit a false pretense offense in order to influence the public to act upon falsified information. The ASC has not to my knowledge ever enforced this misrepresentation of the Alberta public.

To prevent this Alberta Public Interest complaint from being outside of the mandate of the Public Interest Commission to investigate systemic violations of the Alberta Securities Act, I also include a registration search below of three (3) specific registrants who represent themselves to the public as being registered in the category of an Advising Representative (Advisor):

AASEN, Gregory (John) is listed on the CSA registration search page as a “Dealing Representative” representing a (Mutual Fund Dealer). http://aretheyregistered.ca

JAYESH, Acharya of Sun Life in Calgary is also represented as an “Advisor” despite not holding an Advisor registration.

AGLUGUB, Maria Ana (Aguilar) of Sun Life in Edmonton is also represented as a Sun Life “Advisor” while not holding an Advisor or Adviser or Advising Representative registration category in Alberta

However the dealer searched in this example, Sun Life, advertises all of these Sun Life Representatives as “Advisors” at this page https://www.sunlife.ca/ca/Find+an+advis ... cale=en_CA

These three examples shown above are provided to in relation to Alberta Securities Act section 100 titled “Representation”, as well as ASC rules, laws and regulations on misrepresentation, fraud, etc.

Further search results for Sun Life in Alberta contained 505 registration records of their employees. 21 of those 505 records held an Advising Representative registration and the remaining 484 did not.

The Alberta Securities Commission ignores the 484 examples at Sun Life who do not hold this registration, while Sun Life profits from misrepresenting its “Dealing Reps” (Salespersons) as if they were “Advising Reps” or Professional Advisers.

2. Misrepresented financial professionals can use this false pretense to unduly influence and to harm Alberta Investors. Bruce Engel of Engel and Associates, criminal lawyers in Ottawa, defines and explains false pretenses thusly: “To commit fraud means to deprive somebody of something by deceit or a falsehood and to induce a state of mind through a specific course of action.” 

The ASC ignores the title inflation, it ignores the potential for financial disaster for the public, and it ignores the prohibitions in Alberta Securities Act (section 100) which they are required to enforce. They do this if one were to examine each registrant, one by one, or if one wishes to examine nearly all of the 28483 Dealing Representative records found. (Search done June 11, 2019 at http://aretheyregistered.ca)


FACT:
The ASC has taken five unusual yet highly revealing steps which help demonstrate ASC complicity in ensuring that Alberta investors are misinformed of whether they are dealing with a commission sales agent, with the 90 day experience requirement, or a true professional Adviser, with years of experience and a professional duty to protect investors. 

Step #1: Is the alteration of registration categories in September of 2009, which erased the clear and understandable registration category of “saleperson” and replaced it with the less clear and less understandable registration category of “Dealing Representative”.

SOURCE:
The link below is a document which all Canadian Securities Commissions adhered to which provides the source of the above statement. http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/documents/en/S ... lement.pdf

RELEVANCE:
If the ASC is acting to aid in the deception of Alberta investors, and to aid in the unjust enrichment of private financial interests, this evidence would support the complaint that the ASC, or certain key employees may be in breach of the public trust.

Step #2: The ASC then sometime around January of 2018 took further steps and deleted the word “Salesperson” from its description of what a “Dealing Representative” truly is.

SOURCE:
Above is how the ASC (and the Canadian Securities Administrators whom the ASC is a member of) used to publicly describe the “Dealing Representative” category BEFORE it was removed entirely, to the sole benefit of the financial sales industry and to the detriment of the public’s ability to understand exactly with what type of financial person they were dealing with.

RELEVANCE:
The removal of, or concealment of the “Salesperson” descriptor from the view of millions of Alberta investors, is an essential required element in convincing millions of investors that they are dealing with a trusted Advisor, when in fact, they should legally be informed that they are dealing with a “Salesperson”. The ASC, in my experience, acts complicit in aiding and abetting the false pretense being perpetrated upon the Alberta public.

If the ASC’s role is truly to “…strive to protect investors from improper, misleading or fraudulent practices while allowing our capital market to thrive.” (page 7, ASC Annual Report 2018), then the ASC should not be aiding misinformation and misleading Albertans in this manner.

Step #3: The ASC has removed all historical data of Salespersons registration history prior to the Sept 18, 2009 time when the “Salesperson” registration category was renamed the “Dealing Representative” category. This is an unnecessary and costly “cleansing” of the public record with one sole benefactor and that is to protect those who have benefitted from fraudulent misrepresentation.

SOURCE:
http://www.osc.gov.on.ca/documents/en/S ... lement.pdf (Same requirements as Alberta)

RELEVANCE:
If the ASC were truly interested in informing and protecting Alberta investors, then there could be no reason for them to go back a decade in time, to redact, and to eliminate old registration categories from the public record.

This has the effect of preventing justice in legal cases, and preventing research, understanding and disclosure in other instances. The removal of the “Salesperson” wording required tremendous effort involving many, many people and man hours of time, and there can only be one beneficiary of such a “cleansing” of the record. The only beneficiary is in the person or persons who sought to no longer make this information visible to the public.

The public has many reasons to know and understand what the current, as well as the historical registration category was for a representative, and this was why the information was originally included in registration search functions. The only beneficiary of the extraordinary removal or concealment of this license or registration data are the people who could be harmed by this data being made available, which brings us back to the private interests who wish to profit from a false pretense, and to accomplish a clever financial “bait and switch”. The “bait and switch” is in convince the public that they are being offered professional and objective financial advice by professional Advisors…and then dupe them with delivery of commission sales agents, while pocketing the difference. The difference between what a Salesperson can sell you and what a professional Advisor is duty bound to do to serve your interests is typically anywhere from about 2% to 5%. That is the difference (harm to client, profit to Salesperson) that a fraudulent Salesperson can obtain out of a client, IF the client’s unflinching trust can be obtained…by false pretenses.



Step #4: Their work and support in the creation of something called a “Client Relationship Management Disclosure document (CRM2) which hides the most crucial elements of a relationship with an investment service provider.

SOURCE:
https://www.albertasecurities.com/-/med ... 18FE5A4D08

RELEVANCE:
In ASC promotional material for improved “Client Relationship Disclosures” they claim to:
Disclose the relationship (while failing to reveal the true category of registration of the financial service provider?) (False Pretense and negligent misrepresentation)
Disclose conflicts of interest (while concealing the true meaning of what the registration category means?) (failure to reveal WHAT the category of registration means to the investor) (ie, does “Dealing representative” indicate a sales agent?)
Disclose costs (while concealing some of the crucial embedded (hidden) costs paid on an investment)
The hidden elements of CRM2 are greater than what is revealed. Some in the industry call CRM2 a “crime” by regulatory agencies.

Step #5: Unusual practice of resorting to extensive marketing and advertising, TV, Print and Social media (Facebook ads) designed to convey an impression to the public that the ASC is protecting them from fraud, when it might be understood by now that the ASC is a supporter and a participant in the fraud upon the investing public.

SOURCE:
Print, TV and social media advertising by the ASC attempts to further influence the public into a false sense of security, has been ongoing and constant on all media. One or two examples are found on page 23 of this report, of the ASC now forced to advertise in order to market themselves to the public as public protection agents.
The ASC itself is now spreading misinformation, much like the marketing misinformation campaigns that dealers, salespersons and brokers use, to fool investors.

3. The hidden difference in duties of care, between a Dealing Representative (salesperson) and an Advising Representative (Adviser) is sufficient to cut the life savings of investors by 50% to 75%. The Dealing Rep (Salesperson) registration requires 90 days experience to obtain, while the true Advising Rep takes multiple years of supervised professional investment management experience.

To put the investment Dealing Representative into perspective, it takes only 3 months work experience to become an investment sales agent (Dealing Representative) whereby a licensed Hairdresser in Alberta requires 9 months of schooling plus another 9 months of supervised apprentice work.

FACT:
A good indicator of ASC complicity in harming the Alberta public interest is found in their support of commission sales agents with 90 days of investment industry experience being presented to Albertans as if these people were trained professionals with multiple years of experience and training, like what one expects when going to a Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer or other meaningful type of professional.

SOURCE:
#1 ADVISING REP QUALIFICATIONS
The requirements to become registered as an Investment Adviser as provided by the regulator includes:

6.1 The proficiency requirements for a Registered Representative providing discretionary portfolio management for managed accounts that do not trade in futures contracts are:
(a) Successful completion of
(i) The Conduct and Practices Handbook Course, and
(ii) either
A. The courses necessary to attain the Canadian Investment Manager (CIM) Designation, or
B. The three levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst program administered by the CFA Institute;
AND
(b) Experience
(i) Of at least three years as a Registered Representative or a research analyst for a Dealer Member,
(ii) Of at least two years ending not more than three years prior to the date of application as a Registered Advisor under Canadian securities legislation managing on a discretionary basis at least $5,000,000 in aggregate assets; or
(iii) Of at least five years ending not more than three years prior to the date of application, managing a portfolio of $5,000,000 or more, on a discretionary basis, while employed by a government-regulated institution.



SOURCE:
IIROC Proficiency Requirements: http://www.iiroc.ca/Rulebook/MemberRule ... 900_en.pdf

ASC Proficiency requirements:
https://www.albertasecurities.com/-/med ... -2018.ashx
See page 16 for requirements of an “Advising Representative” (Adviser)
Image below shows registration categories

SOURCE #2:

DEALING REP QUALIFICATIONS

Today the requirements are to complete the (A) The Canadian Securities Course prior to commencing the training programme described in subsection (C),
(B) The Conduct and Practices Handbook Course, and
(C) Either
For a Registered Representative dealing with retail customers a 90- day training program during which time he or she has been employed with a Dealer Member firm on a full-time basis
http://www.iiroc.ca/Rulebook/MemberRule ... 900_en.pdf


RELEVANCE:
The only possible reason for a regulatory body to aid in the misrepresentation of professional qualifications and protective duties of care by financial professional is if the regulatory body is serving the interests of the private financial parties that pay their salaries, and not serving the protective interest mandate of the public. This is a reasonably clear indicator of the regulatory intentions behind the actions used by the ASC.

RELEVANCE:
Passing off 90 day commission sales agents as if they were CFA, (Chartered Financial Analyst) or CIM (Certified Investment Manager) trained persons with years of money management experience is tantamount to fraud.

As stated by one source in an article in the Financial post titled “Make Advisors work for investors” by Securities Lawyer and former OSC Chair Ed Waitzer

"Anything else is fraud, because the seller is delivering a service different from what the consumer thinks he or she is buying."

SOURCE:
Edward Waitzer article, Financial Post · Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011) (Mr. Waitzer is a Bay Street Lawyer and former Securities Commission chair, and this quote (by another person) appeared in his article.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/0 ... investors/

It (the fraud) is also well said by a 70 year old victim of this type of false-representation realized, after struggling for nearly a decade to understand what had happened to him and why it was so difficult to understand. Here is how he put it in his own words after ten years and literally thousands of hours spent writing letters and trying to understand what had happened to him and his money:

Peter Whitehouse quote:
"Another way of expressing the repugnancy of the deception is as follows.

We were lead to believe that we were opening up a relationship with a person representing an investment dealer who was going to be sitting on our side of the table, giving us the best “advice” to protect our capital, as we were already in our retirement years.

Instead we were suckered into opening up a relationship with an investment dealer and the Representative who were actually sitting on the other side of the table, whose job was to relieve us of the maximum amount of commissions regardless of the ensuing financial damage to our assets.

Especially, in our case, they used fraudulent misrepresentation that regulators are not interested in pursuing.”


4. Millions of Albertans who save and invest, assume that the ASC is a government regulator and that it must meet the following ASC public promise: “The ASC is responsible for maintaining the integrity of Canada's second-largest capital market. We ensure a fair and level playing field for investors and oversee the conduct of market participants.”

5. However, the interests of ASC’s paymasters are often diametrically opposed to the interests of investors. Thus the public is never informed of the fact that the ASC is fully funded by the industry they claim to regulate, and not by the Government as most investors assume. Private financial interests can make Billions of dollars by putting the public in a position where they are not fairly nor fully informed. While the cost of doing this is mere millions (“tenths” of pennies on the dollar) paid to fund this so-called public interest regulator.

This is not a matter of lying to the public, but like a falsified “Advisor” it is more a matter of “allowing” the public to believe whatever they wish to believe, after letting them have every opportunity for them believe what one would like them to believe. In other words, by first giving the public sufficient direction for them to assume something incorrectly, without actually lying to them, most investors assume this regulator is a government funded, independent and impartial agency.

Relevance to the public of this regulatory “deception”:

The important pubic interest issue of having a “sham” regulator, or one with hidden incentives, ($700,000 salaries) and conflicts of interest, (job security, future appointments, future career considerations, directorship and board invitations) is the following:

A regulator who is highly incentivized to be in a “sinecure” (without care) or a “sycophant” (servile self-seeking) position is a regulator who is willfully blind to the violations of his or her paymasters. This it true throughout history so I am not inventing any new human traits with which to view the Alberta Securities Commission. It is simply that it is worth billions of dollars for private financial players to skirt laws, and to do this they only need pay millions of dollars to these types of regulators.

I make no judgement about human nature. My complaint is that the Alberta Securities Commission is funded by a few tens of millions of dollars from private financial interests, and is doing known harm to the Alberta public. Then acting in manners to ignore the harms to the public, then cover up, remove and even alter historical evidence of those harm to the public.

This is not the mandate of the ASC, nor of the Alberta Legislature which grants power to the ASC, and it is this violation of the public interest which I hope is made clear by this information.

6. Albertans hold investments worth between Seven Hundred and Fifty Billion dollars to One Trillion dollars, according to investment oversight bodies as well as the Bank of Canada. Public harm of 2%-3% annually on this $780 Billion dollar pool of capital would produce $15.6 to 23.4 Billion in added fees and/or commissions to the financial industry. Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) Chair Maureen Jensen is the source of the 2% to 3% annual harm estimates that apply to a deceived public. “The impact of these fees on investor returns is significant,” she said. “Investors experiencing this kind of outcome on a consistent basis would never break even and would, in fact, be worse off.” A second highly credible source (University of Toronto Rotman Pension Study 2007) put the harm to retail mutual fund investors in Canada at 4.8% each year.

FACT:
Albertans hold investments worth roughly 750 Billion dollars to 1 Trillion dollars, according to information from the following investment oversight bodies and the Bank of Canada.

SOURCE:
(re size of investment pools) Statistics obtained from:
Investment Industry Regulatory Agency of Canada (IIROC)
Toronto Stock Exchange, 9th largest exchange in the world by market capitalization
Bank of Canada Bond market statistics
Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC)
Exempt Markets Association, The Private Capital Markets Association of Canada (PCMA)
Ontario Securities Commission
CIBC Mellon

RELEVANCE:
Without knowing all figures and without a number which accurately includes the value of derivatives that may be packaged and sold as an “alternate class” investment, it might be fair to use the One Trillion Dollar figure to calculate what potential investment sums that may be held by Albertans. Readers are welcome to cut those estimates by 25% if they prefer to err on the conservative side.

SOURCE:
(re investor harms) Maureen Jensen quote: In a speech, Maureen cited research from the National Bureau of Economic Research that she said suggests a combination of embedded fees and unsuitable portfolio construction has caused the investment returns of advised clients to lag passive market benchmarks by two to three per cent a year.

Maureen Jensen is the Chair and Chief Executive Officer of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), which administers and enforces securities law in the capital markets of the province of Ontario. Chair and CEO term ends: February 2021

“The impact of these fees on investor returns is significant,” she said. “Investors experiencing this kind of outcome on a consistent basis would never break even and would, in fact, be worse off.”

Maureen Jensen

In her speech, she cited research from the National Bureau of Economic Research that she said suggests a combination of embedded fees and unsuitable portfolio construction has caused the investment returns of advised clients to lag passive market benchmarks by two to three per cent a year.

“The impact of these fees on investor returns is significant,” she said. “Investors experiencing this kind of outcome on a consistent basis would never break even and would, in fact, be worse off.”

http://business.financialpost.com/news/ ... ment-funds

SOURCE:
THE $25 BILLION ‘HAIRCUT’: HOW MUTUAL FUNDS SHRINK PENSIONS by Dr. Keith Ambachtsheer

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzE_LMP ... yOTkw/edit

Keith Ambachtsheer is Director Emeritus of the Rotman International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM). He was founding Director of ICPM 2005-2014, and Editor of the Rotman International Journal of Pension Management 2008-2014. He became founding Academic Director of the international Rotman-ICPM Board Effectiveness Program for board members of pension organizations in 2011. He is a member of the Scholars Council of Georgetown University’s Center for Retirement Initiatives. Through his firm KPA Advisory Services, he has advised pension and investment organizations, as well as governments and its agencies, on the design, governance, and investment policies of retirement income systems since 1985. He co-founded CEM Benchmarking in 1991. CEM benchmarks the organizational performance of over 400 pension organizations worldwide. Keith has authored four books on pension management. He has been the recipient of awards around the world for his work in the pensions, governance, and investments field.

RELEVANCE:
Using estimates of financial harm estimates from the current chairperson of the Ontario Securities Commission and the most esteemed pension expert in Canada lends credibility to the measured magnitude of this problem.





7. With possible annual financial harm to Alberta society in the $15.6 to 23.4 Billion per year range, this exceeds not only the cost of the Fort Mac fire disaster at $3.6 Billion, but exceeds the financial harm done by all measured crimes in the province. (Source: Justice Canada and Stats Canada estimates of total measured crime).

Estimate: $20 to 30 Billion of annual harm using OSC Chairperson Maureen Jensen’s “2-3% estimates” and $38 billion of annual harm to the public using Dr Keith Ambachtsheer’s mutual fund harm study numbers.

SOURCE:
see point #7 above re size of investment capital held

RELEVANCE:
Whether you believe either of these expert’s numbers, or wish to cut them by half, or disbelieve entirely, I am well experienced from working two decades inside the industry that I write about, in misrepresented, conflicted commission sales agents being able to take advantage of trusting and vulnerable clients by anywhere from 2% per year at the low-harm end of the scale, and 6% per year at the medium-harm end of the scale.

For this complaint, I ignored the upper ends of harm observed, 10%, due to these individuals being extreme examples of Salesperson greed, and are thus not fair numbers to use for the harm to the average Albertan. I prefer to stay within a range that I can defend on behalf of average retail investors. However, it must be remembered that some investors (exempt markets products etc) have resulted in 100% loss of capital to some unfortunate individuals. A few years ago there were over 22,000 exempt market investment holders in Alberta with some $2 billion lost in those areas. All losses were 100%, and not just 2%, 3% or 10%.

I will say that in the “10% and over” of unjust enrichment scale: that some persons in this category were highly likely to be granted the “Vice President” designation”. To learn more about that falsified designation used to lure clients into a false sense of trust, read the fascinating case in Canada titled “Markarian vs CIBC World markets”

Quebec Justice Senecal used the word “fraud” around 226 times in his written judgement against CIBC, and it is perhaps the only case known to myself where the judgement is available for the public to see what went on. Most cases are settled and silenced, with confidentiality agreements so the public never gets to truly see what can and does happen.

One man's battle against CIBC exposes the billion-dollar scams behind our country’s “stable” financial sector. By Bruce Livesey, September 6, 2010
https://maisonneuve.org/article/2010/09 ... -makarian/
Markarian v. CIBC World Markets Inc.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6&p=3993&hilit=Markarian#p3993

8. The ASC has turned a blind eye to this widespread public deception for many years, despite being made aware of the negligent and false misrepresentations and despite increased media coverage of same. Due to multiple years of ASC willful blindness, the harms to Albertans could add up to hundreds of Billions of dollars in financial damage to the public, and hundreds of Billions of unjust enrichment for the private financial interests who fund ASC’s salaries.

FACT:
It was in the late 1980’s when “account executives”, “brokers”, “investment executives”, and a few other titles used for the sales representatives of the investment dealers were changed to investment “Advisor”. (without changing their true role and registration)

SOURCE:
I was in the industry when the great crash of 1987 took much of the shine off of investing for a period of time. It was then that business cards were recalled and newly issue cards created a new title called “Investment Advisor”.

RELEVANCE:
The importance is that investment dealers were not as much interested in following laws or rules and principles of honest disclosure, but rather finding a marketing title which might more easily convince the public to deal with their sales reps.

The sales role had not changed, and has not chanced a great deal today (2019), but what was intended was to paint a new, false veneer of professionalism over the old sales broker role. The role of a broker or investment Salesperson has not changed, however they have simply (fraudulently) been able to utilize a borrowed title from a completely separate professional role.

This bait and switch is pandemic in Canada, (and allowed by the Alberta Securities Commission) so much that investors are not even allowed to know the difference between the roles, and are never fairly informed that “selling investment products is NOT giving advice”, and “giving investment advice does not involve selling investment products”. The willful blindness of the regulator, the Alberta Securities Commission is the key thing which stands between investors, and fair, honest disclosure. They (the ASC) is a crucial component of being able to deceive millions of investors.

Once the public accepts the “bait”, and is never informed of the “switch”, they are never informed of the counterparty-relationship they are in, and they are able to be harmed by those 2% to nearly 4% figures that I accept from OSC Chairperson Maureen Jenson and U of T Professor Dr. Keith Ambactscheer.

9. Perhaps in response to disclosures such as this as well as increased media coverage, the ASC has recently begun advertising campaigns (industry-paid) which reinforce mis-information, and omission of the most essential information of importance to investors, which serves to further confuse and deceive the public. This seems highly unusual for a so-called regulator.

There are many examples to list. TV, Print, social media abound with ASC self promotion, assuring the public that the ASC is protecting them from fraud, while the ASC is intentionally allowing fraud to harm to Albertans.



10. Canada’s most respected investigative journalist, Bruce Livesey, revealed the following uncomfortable truth in 2019, “You have to understand that white collar crime is legal in Canada”.

FACT:
At the highest levels in Canada, police (RCMP) are working “within” the offices of Securities Commissions and I believe police are unaware that they are seeking assistance from persons who are paid and influenced by private financial interests who profit to a greater extent when laws can be ignored and laws can be exempted for those private financial interests.

SOURCE:
Joint Securities Intelligence Unit (JSIU)
The OSC and the RCMP are partners in the JSIU, which targets criminal syndicates involved in illegal market activity and fraud by organized crime groups operating in Canada. The JSIU also handles requests for information from its internal intelligence databases. https://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/About_our- ... _index.htm

SOURCE:
Joint Serious Offences Team (JSOT)
JSOT is an enforcement partnership between the OSC, the RCMP Financial Crime program and the Ontario Provincial Police Anti-Rackets Branch. JSOT combines law enforcement policing skills with the OSC's expertise in forensic accounting and capital markets to investigate and prosecute serious violations of the law using provisions of the Securities Act (Ontario) and Criminal Code. https://www.osc.gov.on.ca/en/About_our- ... _index.htm

RELEVANCE:
When private financial interests gain unfair or unjust enrichment, they can at times count on these cooperative relationships with the RCMP IMET and other divisions, and can influence the direction of police investigations to the benefit of private financial interests. (ASC and OSC in same Canadian Securities Administrators organization across Canada)

FACT:
As high as the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, (FCAC) persons are appointed, and funding is provided, by private financial interests whose interest is best served when there is little to no regulatory oversight.

SOURCE:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fcac-b ... -1.5091115
“Documents reveal 'cosy' relationship between the government, the banking industry and its watchdog” (CBC news)



RELEVANCE:
The private self-interests of the financial industry are powerful enough and widespread enough to infiltrate (and fund) even the FCAC (Financial Consumer Agency of Canada) sufficiently to allow private financial interests to alter and redact reports which found evidence of abuse of the public by those private financial interests.

11. In this complaint I state to the Public Interest Commissioner, “Please understand that white collar collusion allows private financial interests to ignore laws”. In a separate complaint to the Alberta Public Interest Commission I hope to shine a light into the practice of the ASC allowing private financial interests to purchase exemptions which allow then to quietly and without public notice, skirt laws and flaunt public protections.”

FACT:
The mandate of the Alberta Public interest Commissioner appears well suited to this commission being the best possible arena to shine a light into them. When nothing is done by each agency, each ombudsman, each attorney general, by the Competition Bureau of Canada, and other public protective agencies, then our society declines. Some indication of the decline in society can be seen in the decline in the social and mental health of society.

12. Purchase of exemptions to Securities Act law is similar to the ability to purchase a “deferred prosecution agreement” in advance of committing a violation of the law.

Granting of exemptions to public protective laws, in nearly total public secrecy, to private financial interests, is a separate but equally revealing issue of a corrupt or captured regulator, which involves the ASC. This matter may be dealt with in a separate complaint, for simplicity and clarity.

It is simple unjust enrichment to a group of private wealthy interests, at a cost of direct harm to an entire society.

===========


Appendix A:

Sep 10, 2018 - the secondary market. •. As of December 31, 2017, the amount of GoC securities outstanding was $690 billion
Plus:
Exempt markets value
Stock Market Value
Investment funds value
Corporate Bonds
Derivatives
Alternative investments

Canadian corporate debt growing and getting riskier - The Globe and ...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/.../art ... -and-get...

Mar 29, 2019 - Canadian corporations have US$97-billion in debt, both investment grade and non-investment grade, maturing between now and 2023 – the most for any five-year span since 2009.

A $3-trillion credit market has corporate bond investors on edge ...
https://business.financialpost.com › Investing › Funds

Apr 26, 2018 - A huge swath of the corporate bond market is looking increasingly vulnerable. ... Bond bears seen losing bravado with Canada yields at 7-year high ... from Moody's Investors Service — total about $3 trillion, almost the size of … https://www.osc.gov.on.ca/documents/en/ ... t-2014.pdf

Alberta has 12% of the population of Canada and thus it may be reasonable to assume that Albertan’s might also hold 12% of the investment capital of the land. If so, Albertan’s may hold $780 Billion in investment assets.
A 2% factor of industry overcharge upon this $780 Billion dollar pool may produce $15.6 billion in additional fees and commissions to the industry which the ASC regulates.

A 3.8% financial disadvantage, as described by the U of T Pension Analysis of 2007, could thus amount to a $29.6 Billion dollar “haircut” to the Alberta public each year. It is easy to see why having ones own regulator might be a good “investment” for the financial industry when they only have to pay them about $40 million to “operate”.
Invest $40 Million to purchase the regulatory regime, obtain willful blindness and thousands of exemptions (a separate public interest abuse issue) to our laws, allowing nearly $30 Billion to be gained. Gained unjustly from the public according to the comments by OSC Chair Maureen Jensen who provided the 2% to 3% estimates, and U of T Pension studies by Prof Keith Ambachtscheer whose analysis provided the 3.8% figures.

In a speech, Maureen Jensen (OSC Chairperson) cited research from the National Bureau of Economic Research that she said suggests a combination of embedded fees and unsuitable portfolio construction has caused the investment returns of advised clients to lag passive market benchmarks by two to three per cent a year.


“The impact of these fees on investor returns is significant,” she said. “Investors experiencing this kind of outcome on a consistent basis would never break even and would, in fact, be worse off.” Maureen Jensen

In her speech, she cited research from the National Bureau of Economic Research that she said suggests a combination of embedded fees and unsuitable portfolio construction has caused the investment returns of advised clients to lag passive market benchmarks by two to three per cent a year.

“The impact of these fees on investor returns is significant,” she said. “Investors experiencing this kind of outcome on a consistent basis would never break even and would, in fact, be worse off.”

http://business.financialpost.com/news/ ... ment-funds
September 27, 2016

[admin]

SIPA Calls for Royal Commission of Inquiry and an independent (from industry) National Investor Protection Authority
http://www.sipa.ca/library/pressRelease ... 9_2019.pdf

NEWS RELEASE – April 29, 2019

A Voice for Small Investors Seeking Truth and Justice

On behalf of all Canadians, the Small Investor Protection Association (SIPA) is renewing its call on our Government
· To immediately launch a Public Commission of Inquiry into financial services and investments, and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC)
· To establish an independent National Investor Protection Authority with the sole mandate to protect the Canadian public.

In light of CBC’s latest report revealing collusion between the FCAC, the Big Banks and the Finance Department: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fcac-b ... -1.5091115

an independent public inquiry is necessary to get to the truth. The public’s voices need to be heard and not just the industry and its captured regulators. It is time to review the FCAC as well as the banks.

There appears to be a far too 'cozy' relationship between the banking industry, the FCAC and the Finance Department. The public cannot rely on the FCAC to regulate, or the Finance Department to allow for an independent review of the system, and its regulation. The FCAC sent early versions of its investigation report to the Finance Department and the big banks with resulting edit occurring to make the report more favourable to the big banks.

Thanks to media, the bigger contextual picture is finally emerging. These revelations, along with the SNC Lavalin affair and the Ontario Finance Minister’s intervention regarding the “independent regulator” Ontario Securities Commission action relative to mutual fund fees, bring the word TRUST into a highly capitalized focus. Will we ever get the objective truth and how much more is being tainted by undue influence?

Canadians are losing their savings due to systemic fraud and wrongdoing by a financial services industry that does not put clients’ best interests first, disregarding laws or rules and regulations. It has been possible to defraud tens of thousands of clients for up to a decade as indicated by recent No Contest Settlements by paying fines to avoid admitting responsibility and litigation. Where were the regulators?

It is essential that Government acts:

· to revise Statutes to ensure that all firms and individuals offering financial advice are held to a fiduciary standard regardless of their titles.
· to ensure those tasked with over-seeing industry conduct are impartial, willing and capable of effectively sanctioning those who persist in unfairly harvesting Canadians savings. They must levy appropriate financial fines and incarceration when warranted.
· to ensure victims are paid restitution when warranted without having to turn to costly civil litigation.
· to create an independent National Investor Protection Authority with the requisite authority to properly protect Canadians from fraud and wrongdoing by the financial services industry.

With so many highly paid regulators across Canada tasked with consumer protection mandates, the question arises why is it left to the media to break these stories?

The implications here for Canadians are enormous. Given the potential extent of continuing financial harm to Canadians, it is essential that our Government takes positive action without undue delay.

It must not be Caveat Emptor in a relationship that is based solidly on trust.

Canadians are entrusting their hard-earned money, savings and futures with what should be trusted institutions and individuals.

SIPA – website: http://www.sipa.ca – e-mail: sipa.toronto@gmail.com
SMALL INVESTOR PROTECTION ASSOCIATION
A Voice for Small Investors Seeking Truth and Justice
About SIPA: The Small Investor Protection Association (SIPA) was incorporated (Ontario corporation number 1327366) as a national non-profit organization at the end of January, 1999. SIPA is a voice for small investors and advocates for the interests of investors.
SOURCE: Small Investor Protection Association
For further information:
Stan I. Buell, President, Small Investor Protection Association email: stanbuell@gmail.com or sipa.toronto@gmail.com
tel: 902-213-3124

[admin]

What is white-collar crime?
https://www.i20research.com/articles/20 ... llar-crime

By Bruce Livesey
April 24, 2019

We all recognize so-called street crime: it’s someone breaking and entering and robbing your home, or stealing your car or other possessions. It’s murder, physical and sexual assault, human trafficking, selling illegal narcotics.
These sorts of crimes involve police forces, criminal trials and a possibility of long prison sentences. Street crime is often the crime of the poor, working class and those with addiction and mental health problems.
On the other hand, white-collar crime is usually seen as crime of the upper classes, businesspeople and the rich.

Yet white-collar crime often does far more damage to societies than street crime.

Take the 2007-’09 credit crisis, which led to the destruction of up to $15-trillion in wealth, the failure of 165 financial institutions in the US – including storied investment houses like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill Lynch – high unemployment and the loss of millions of people’s homes. AIG, America’s largest insurer, had to be rescued by the federal government. It led to the largest bailouts of banks and financial institutions by taxpayers in history.

People in the financial industry would say the credit crisis was caused by a bit of reckless investing and not rampant criminality. But they would be wrong.

Part of securities law is you can’t lie to investors about what you’re selling them. You can’t say you are selling them a horse when you’re really selling them a pig.

Yet at the heart of the credit crisis was a scheme by the financial industry to take toxic debt, in the form of over-extended mortgages, and slap triple-A ratings on it before selling securities based on this deteriorating debt - all the while claiming it was a safe and secure investment.

In fact, the granddaddy of all investment houses,

Goldman Sachs, engaged in outright criminality in one case when they attracted investors to an investment fund, and then conspired with a short seller to ensure the bonds underlying the fund would collapse in value.

They would then profit from the catastrophe by taking out insurance on the crashing fund. In fact,

to guarantee the pool imploded, Goldman Sachs allowed the short seller to pick the worst quality bonds

. Investors lost (US) $1-billion when the fund blew up. Eventually Goldman was forced to pay a (US) $550-million fine for engineering this scam.
White-collar crime comes in many guises.
It can be a lawyer stealing money from a client’s trust fund, a broker stealing his client’s money and investing it in something they’ve not approved.
It can be insider trading, whereby people with inside knowledge about a publicly-traded company’s situation, can buy or sell stock before the public knows about it (as Martha Stewart did and went to jail as a result). There can be, such as in the case of former media baron

Conrad Black, helping yourself to money that should have gone to shareholders.

It can be establishing elaborate schemes to fool the public, such as claiming you have created a new invention, and raising money on that lie – as Elizabeth Holmes and her blood-testing company Theranos are accused of doing.
There are Ponzi schemes, whereby you attract investors with promises of high returns. But instead of investing their money, you’re simply paying back to investors their very own money. As long as new investors are pouring in money, Ponzi schemes can exist for years, as seen with Bernie Madoff.

There are pump and dumps, whereby crooks find a publicly-listed company and raise money on the markets based on fraudulent claims of the company’s performance, and then cash out their own shares before the stocks fall.
And there are many variations of these themes. But ultimately, white-collar crime is separating investors from their cash with false promises about the health of companies, or fraudulent and non-existent investments or inventions.

Unfortunately, with the demise of strong regulatory regimes around the world, a weak business press and conflicted-out auditors, investors often have no idea whether they are being misled about various investments.

https://www.i20research.com/articles/20 ... llar-crime

[admin]

As the SNC-Lavalin case was breaking this past winter, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) asked me do a television interview about the emerging scandal.

At one point I was asked why I thought the government was considering offering the engineering giant a deferred prosecution agreement (DFA), instead of pursuing a case against them through the courts?

“You have to understand, white collar crime is legal in Canada,”

I replied.

Why did I say this?

Look at the SNC-Lavalin case as an example. Despite SNC-Lavalin’s long history of offering bribes in Canada and around the world to win contracts, the federal government was eager to let them off the hook by offering a DFA. And probably would have done so if cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould hadn’t resisted and then been demoted, and then went public.

Here is another illustration:

In June, 2012, Boaz Manor was released from a residential-style minimum security prison – the so-called Club Med of penitentiaries – after serving a little more than a year behind bars. He’d been sentenced to four years.

Yet Manor was behind one of the largest frauds in Canadian business history. He had been the investing brains of Portus Alternative Asset Management Inc., a Bay Street hedge fund.

Portus had been shut down in 2005 by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) amid allegations of fraud. Portus had raised $800-million from investors, of which $110-million was spent to keep the fund running – money investors were led to believe was mostly being invested.

But Manor had also shovelled (US) $53-million of investors’ money into a maze of offshore bank accounts. And after the OSC closed Portus, he went into its offices one evening and destroyed records.

Manor then bolted the country, ending up in Israel. By the time he was extradited back to Canada in 2007, $17.6-million of the $53-million had gone missing and was never found. Manor had taken some of this money and converted it into diamonds, which he then claimed had vanished.

Yet Ontario’s Attorney-General’s office did not hit him with fraud or theft charges – but merely allowed him to plead guilty to one count of breach of trust and another for disobeying a court order, despite, as one lawyer told me: "He basically embezzled the funds and took millions of dollars and bought other things for himself.”

This past winter it emerged that Manor had moved to New York, disguised his appearance and was going by the name of Shaun MacDonald. He began working for a company that makes cryptocurrency terminals. By the time this came to light, the company was in dire financial straits and no longer able to pays its employees - despite having raised $31-million from investors. Once more Manor was connected to a business that was failing under mysterious circumstances.

I recall speaking to an American lawyer about the Manor-Portus case who once worked for the US Dept. of Justice and been involved in the prosecution of Conrad Black. He said if Manor had been pursued in the US, he would have remained in jail until he coughed up the money he stole from Portus’ investors. Yet in Canada, he was sent to one of the cushiest prisons for a few months.

As one former RCMP fraud investigator, Bill Majcher, told me:

“His sentence is a reinforcement that crime pays in Canada. It's totally inadequate. I'd do a few months in a provincial or federal penitentiary if I could pocket millions of dollars.”

In the more recent cases of Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Sino-Forest, these frauds led to in excess of $100-billion in investors’ combined losses. Yet no one has gone to jail, and unlikely ever will.

Why is white collar crime not pursued in Canada?

It’s because Canada has one of the weakest securities regulatory systems in the world. Canada has no national securities regulators like the SEC.

Instead,

it has provincial securities commissions that have been captured by local financial and legal establishments, making them ineffectual.

And the RCMP’s Integrated Market Enforcement Teams (IMET), established in the wake of the Enron scandal, turned out to be ineffective too and no longer exist in their original form. Local cop shops are way out of their depth when it comes to complicated securities’ frauds.

That’s why corporate crime is legal in Canada.

This article originally appeared on i20research.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstor ... fzloPrr5AM

[admin]

This film work from 2011 now makes a great deal more sense, in hindsight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbACCGf6q-c

Published on 31 Oct 2011

This 2009 entertaining documentary film explores the history of banking, the selling out of the prosperity of Canada, the clearance sale of Canadian businesses and the political liquidation of public infrastructures to the multi-national corporate oligarchy. How has this led to the biggest economic crash / recession / depression in Canadian history? Could it have something to do with our politicians listening to international bankers and corporations instead of the people Canada? How does the Canadian banking system really work? How does the central Bank of Canada compare with the American Federal Reserve?


This movie presents these issues that affect every Canadian from the perspective of and delivered by concerned youth in a astute and colourful manner. This is a serious journalism piece that asks the tough questions directly to such politicians as Former Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, Ontario Gas Man Dan McTeague, NDP Leader Jack Layton, Mayor of Oshawa John Gray, Former Prime Minister of Canada John Turner and many more!

[admin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91cxRah-VfM
“no more than organized crime”
“living the high life on criminal acts”
"losses run into many, many billions of dollars”
“white collar crime in the City of London totally dwarfs blue collar crime”
“at worst an organized crime gang....”
“has almost destroyed the world economy...”


@GeorgeGalloway
Former British Member of Parliament




Five Minutes worth watching to see why the world can no longer afford nice things....

[admin]

https://leftfootforward.org/2019/05/prem-sikka-how-uk-regulators-have-covered-up-corruption-and-fraud/

Prem Sikka: How UK regulators have covered up corruption and fraud
Prem Sikka
March 17, 2019

Left Foot Forward

Corporate cover-ups go right to the top, writes accounting expert Professor Prem Sikka.


Why is the finance industry so mired in scandals?

The UK has had a banking scandal in every decade since 1970s, culminating in the big financial crash in 2007-08. The finance industry has also excelled at mis-selling financial products, such as mortgages, bonds and payment protection insurance; and rigging interest rates and foreign exchange rates.

People look to regulators to curb pernicious practices, but regulators are more interested in protecting corporations and elites than citizens.

The latest example of this thesis is provided by revelations this week: behind the scenes, the Bank of England (£) warned prosecutors not to bring criminal charges against Barclays Bank.

The background is that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had charged Barclays PLC and four individuals with conspiracy to commit fraud and the provision of unlawful financial assistance. The charges arose out of Barclays PLC’s capital-raising arrangements with Qatar Holding LLC and Challenger Universal Ltd in 2008, as well as a US$3 billion loan facility made available to the State of Qatar acting through the Ministry of Economy and Finance in November 2008. In October 2018, the High Court ruled against the SFO’s application to reinstate the criminal charges previously dismissed in the Crown Court.

The Bank of England apparently opposed criminal action on the grounds that a corporate criminal charge would present a small, but not insignificant, threat to Barclays’ safety and soundness.

This begs the usual questions about the independence of the elites running the regulatory institutions and their desire to protect the industry rather than people.

A legacy of illegality

The Barclays case is not unique. The financial regulators have a habit of burying scandals and ignoring the stench of corruption. The Tomlinson Report, published in 2013, provided evidence of systemic abuse of bank customers and small businesses at Royal Bank of Scotland. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) did nothing.

The FCA commissioned a report into malpractices at RBS and decided not to publish because it was considered to be confidential – apparently content to deny customers any right to secure redress. The House of Commons Treasury Committee secured a copy and published the report, stating:

“The findings in the report are disgraceful. The overarching priority at all levels of GRG was not the health and strength of customers, but the generation of income for RBS, through made-up fees, high interest rates, and the acquisition of equity and property”.

Yet still no action from the FCA against the bank, its directors and advisers.

Massive frauds at HBOS are documented in the Project Lord Turnbull Report. The report shows that bankers enriched themselves at the expense of business clients, many of which were forced into insolvency and were stripped of their assets. The FCA has brought no action.

In this vacuum, Thames Valley Police investigated and secured criminal conviction of six bankers. Police Commissioner Anthony Stansfeld said:

“I am convinced the cover-up goes right up to Cabinet level. And to the top of the City.”

Under the rug

Successive UK governments have been adept at sweeping things under the carpet. The twentieth century’s biggest banking fraud occurred at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). It was forcibly shut-down in July 1991, but to this day there has been no independent investigation and the government concealed the identity of the miscreants.

The Tax Justice Network described the BCCI case as ‘possibly the biggest banking fraud in history’:

“BCCI is a story of massive-scale money laundering, bribery, blackmail, and organised crime, operating through a secrecy network involving deceit, fraud, and the brokering of power and influence around the world.”

After five and half year litigation, I secured one secret report, code named the Sandstorm Report, which shows that

individuals with high political links, connections with royal families in the Middle East, and intelligence services benefited from the BCCI debacle.

In 2012, HSBC paid a fine of $1.9bn to US authorities for its role in money laundering by drug traffickers and governments on sanctions lists. The US Department of Justice stated that the bank “accepted responsibility for its criminal conduct and that of its employees”.

Right to the top

The UK did not mount any investigation in the HSBC case. Instead, then-Chancellor George Osborne secretly wrote to the US regulators and urged them to go easy. HSBC escaped criminal charges.

Of course, the finance sector is not the only sector indulged by the Nelsonian habits of UK governments and regulators. For example, Prime Minister Tony Blair personally intervened to prevent investigation of bribes paid by BAE to secure sales of weapons. Such efforts were exposed by the US inquiries which resulted in fines on BAE.

All these cover-ups and more embolden companies and their directors to engage in corrupt practices and pose serious questions about the rule of law, nature of democracy and people’s right to know.

Little attention is paid to the plight of innocent victims of frauds and malpractices.

There is little public accountability of ministers and regulators and in this vacuum corrupt practices continue to flourish.

The UK regulatory apparatus has a tendency to protect big corporations and elites rather than the people. It is not fit for purpose.

Prem Sikka is a Professor of Accounting at University of Sheffield, and Emeritus Professor of Accounting at University of Essex. He is a Contributing Editor for Left Foot Forward and tweets here.


*********************
Related:
IN NORTH AMERICAN GOVERNANCE

12:42 Government Will Not Save You From Corporations

https://youtu.be/mCAIj3YJUmg

[admin]

Former RCMP money laundering expert Bill Majcher says that in his opinion,

“... the Canadian Bar Association is probably the most powerful criminal organization in Canada...”

(within 30 seconds of the time stamp below)

from about 1:19:35 in this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbAwzUlfcJ0&t=5263s

His entire talk is well worth a listen to hear how our most trusted criminals do their work in Canada.

He begins at about 1:05:45

France is Lost, The Fix is In: Gerald Celente & RCMP Inspector Bill Majcher
YouTube

[admin]

When people rob banks they are prosecuted.
When banks rob people...they get rich.

Larry Elford, 2019



Cartel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the legal term. For other uses, see Cartel (disambiguation).

A cartel is a group of apparently independent producers whose goal is to increase their collective profits by means of price fixing, limiting supply, or other restrictive practices. Cartels typically control selling prices, but some are organized to control the prices of purchased inputs. Antitrust laws attempt to deter or forbid cartels. A single entity that holds a monopoly by this definition cannot be a cartel, though it may be guilty of abusing said monopoly in other ways. Cartels usually occur in oligopolies, where there are a small number of sellers and usually involve homogeneous products.

In general, cartels can be divided into domestic and international agreements.[1] Export cartels constitute a special case of international cartels. Unlike other cartels, export cartels are legal in virtually all jurisdictions, despite their harmful effects on affected markets.[2]

Bid rigging is a special type of cartel.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

— Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

A survey of hundreds of published economic studies and legal decisions of antitrust authorities found that the median price increase achieved by cartels in the last 200 years is about 23 percent.

Today, however, price fixing by private entities is illegal under the antitrust laws of more than 140 countries. Examples of prosecuted international cartels are lysine, citric acid, graphite electrodes, and bulk vitamins. This is highlighted in countries with market economies wherein price-fixing and the concept of cartels are considered inimical to free and fair competition, which is considered the backbone of political democracy.[6] The current condition makes it increasingly difficult for cartels to maintain sustainable operations. Even if international cartels might be out of reach for the regulatory authorities, they will still have to contend with the fact that their activities in domestic markets will be affected.[7]

See Also:
Collusion
Competition law
Competition regulator
Content cartel
De Beers
Drug cartel
Dairy cartel
Economic regulator
Industrial organization
Maple Syrup cartel
Monopsony
Organized crime
OPEC
Phoebus cartel (1925–1955), for light bulbs
Robber baron
Standard Oil
State cartel theory
Tacit collusion
Trust

Bibliography[edit]

Bishop, Simon and Mike Walker (1999): The Economics of EC Competition Law. Sweet and Maxwell.
Connor, John M. (2008): Global Price Fixing: 2nd Paperback Edition. Heidelberg: Springer.
Freyer, Tony A.: Antitrust and global capitalism 1930–2004, New York 2006.
Hexner, Ervin, The International Steel Cartel, Chapel Hill 1943.
Kleinwächter, Friedrich, Die Kartelle. Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Organisation der Volkswirtschaft, Innsbruck 1883.
Levenstein, Margaret C. and Valerie Y. Suslow. "What Determines Cartel Success?" Journal of Economic Literature 64 (March 2006): 43–95.
Liefmann, Robert: Cartels, Concerns and Trusts, Ontario 2001 [London 1932]
Martyniszyn, Marek, "Export Cartels: Is it Legal to Target Your Neighbour? Analysis in Light of Recent Case Law", Journal of International Economic Law 15(1) (2012): 181–222.
Stocking, George W. and Myron W. Watkins. Cartels in Action. New York: Twentieth Century Fund (1946).
Stigler, George J., "The extent and bases of monopoly, in: The American economic review, Bd. 32 (1942), pp. 1–22.
Stigler, George J., The theory of price, New York 1987, 4th Ed.
Tirole, Jean (1988): The Theory of Industrial Organization. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Wells, Wyatt C.: Antitrust and the Formation of the Postwar World, New York 2002.
References[edit]
^ Fellman, Susanna; Shanahan, Martin (2015). Regulating Competition: Cartel registers in the twentieth-century world. London: Routledge. p. 224. ISBN 9781138021648.
^ Martyniszyn, Marek (2012). "Export Cartels: Is it Legal to Target your Neighbour? Analysis in Light of Recent Case Law". Journal of International Economic Law. 15 (1): 181. doi:10.1093/jiel/jgs003.
^ John M. Connor. Cartel Overcharges, pp. 249-387 of The Law and Economics of Class Actions, in Vol. 29 of Research in Law and Economics, edited by James Langenfeld (March 2014). Bingley, UK: Emerald House Publishing Ltd. June 2017
^ Cini, Michelle; McGowan, Lee (2009). Competition Policy in the European Union. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 63. ISBN 0-230-00675-2.
^ Lee, John (2016). Strategies to Achieve a Binding International Agreement on Regulating Cartels: Overcoming Doha Standstill. Berlin: Springer. p. 13. ISBN 978-981-10-2755-0.
^ Sagafi-Nejad, Tagi; Moxon, Richard; Perlmutter, Howard (2017). Controlling International Technology Transfer: Issues, Perspectives, and Policy Implications. New York: Pergamon Press. p. 180. ISBN 0-08-027180-4.
^ Fellman & Shanahan, p. 224.
^ Martyniszyn, Marek (2017). "Foreign State's Entanglement in Anticompetitive Conduct". World Competition. 40 (2): 299.

[admin]

May 2019
FAIR Focus

FAIR Canada Calls for Support from Canadians
Dear Canadians,

As you can see from the Globe and Mail story below, FAIR Canada is struggling for funding to be able to properly discharge its mission of representing the interests of Canadian investors and consumers of financial products and services.

The social contract between Canadians and Canadian financial institutions is working well for the banks, insurance companies and the investment dealers. The government protects them from competition and backstops them in times of crisis.

In return, Canadians put their trust in financial institutions and these financial institutions are supposed to treat investors/consumers fairly, honestly and in good faith.

They breach this trust by hard selling financial products that are in their best interests, not yours. These products will take 40-50% (or more) of your investment returns over the next 25 years. Canadians retiring with inadequate savings will precipitate a retirement crisis for many Canadians and for governments.

The financial industry is extremely powerful and influential. In addition to the resources of individual firms, they fund lobby organizations to the tune of $10M or $100M per year. Ordinary Canadians' influence on the government is dwarfed by that of the financial industry.

FAIR Canada is the only professional national investor rights organization advocating for ordinary Canadians and needs your support. How can you help?
Help us reach more people! Send this newsletter to 3 contacts and ask them to subscribe (and ask them to send it to 3 more contacts, etc.)

Make a donation to FAIR Canada to help us advocate for better financial outcomes for ordinary Canadians. You can donate here

For lawyers, registered persons and listed companies:

In class actions, consider FAIR Canada as a potential recipient for awards or cy-pres distributions,

In regulatory proceedings settlements involving a voluntary payment, consider suggesting to the regulator that the payment be made to FAIR Canada.
Such contributions will serve the interests of retail investors and Canadian consumers of financial products and services. And it may soften the reputational damage of a civil action or disciplinary action.

Thank you for your support!

Ermanno Pascutto
Executive Director

==========

Written by David Milstead and originally published in the Globe and Mail.

...............................................................................................................................

The primary advocacy group for Canadian investors is losing money, looking for an executive director - and struggling to survive.

"We're in a bit of an existential crisis," said Ermanno Pascutto, the founder and, now, interim executive director of the Canadian Foundation for the Advancement of Investor Rights, known as FAIR Canada. The group was started in 2008 to provide a voice for individual investors that would complement, and sometimes oppose, the investment industry's views when securities regulators developed new rules and regulations.

In recent months, FAIR Canada has submitted comments or participated in roundtables on mutual-fund sales practices, the client-financial-adviser relationship, and a proposed code of conduct for banks selling products to senior citizens.

FAIR Canada has survived in large part in recent years on a $2-million gift from Stephen Jarislowsky, the founder of investment firm Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., and an additional $2-million contribution from the Ontario Securities Commission, which used money collected in settlements and from fines.

To read the full article on our website click here.
To read the original article on the Globe and Mail website click here.

T-REX Scores: Mutual Fund Investors Need to Know the Score!

Mutual Funds with 2% Management Expense Ratio (MER) take 40-50% of your investment return over 25 years!

How much of your mutual fund returns are lost because of investment fees?

Most investment fees are quoted as a percentage of the amount invested. So, a fund with 2% fees will cost you 2% of your total investment annually. This method can be misleading.

When you pay investment fees, you lose twice. You lose the fee and you lose some of your compounding magic. Annual fee quotations give no indication that your 'compounding loss' accelerates as the years pass.

How do you measure the impact of fees on your investments?

It's simple: calculate your T-Rex score!

T-Rex Score stands for Total Efficiency Return Index Score. It allows you to calculate how much of your total investment returns on your underlying investments translate into returns for you. The higher your T-Rex Score, the more of your investment return you get to keep. To figure out the T-Rex Score of your investments you should know: your investment amount, projected average annual return on underlying investments before fees, annual fees, and projected life of investment (time horizon).

Read the full excerpt on T-Rex Scores here.

You can input that information on Larry Bates' website to find out your T-Rex Score: http://www.larrybates.ca.

Vanisha Sukdeo has joined FAIR Canada as Director of Policy Research
Executive Director Ermanno Pascutto is pleased to announce that Vanisha Sukdeo has joined FAIR Canada as the Director of Policy Research.

Vanisha was Called to the Bar in 2007 and is a Ph.D. Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. She taught at Osgoode for years as a Course Director including courses such as Business Associations and Legal Process. She completed her LL.M. at Osgoode and LL.B. at Queen's Law. Vanisha's first book was published in July 2018 and her second book is set for publication in July 2019. Vanisha has published articles on a wide range of topics from corporate law to labour & employment law.
Syndicated Mortgages
On May 9, 2019 FAIR Canada made a submission regarding the CSA Second Notice and Request for Comment relating to Syndicated Mortgages. FAIR Canada had commented on syndicated mortgages in June 2018 and wrote about some of our ongoing concerns in the May 2019 submission. We wrote about welcoming the transfer of jurisdiction in regard to regulation of syndicated mortgages from the FSCO to the OSC.

FAIR held that the addition of Form 45-106F18 was useful because it requires the addition of disclosure about the speculative nature of an investment in a syndicated mortgage. While this is an improvement, we echoed our concerns from our June 2018 submission that this risk disclosure does still not go far enough because many retail investors lack sufficient financial literacy to be proficient in financial matters associated with investments in syndicated mortgages. We re-emphasized in our submission that resources within the CSA and OSC should be allocated to encourage compliance and enforcing the rules applicable to syndicated mortgage investments once in place.