Hi everyone -- Adrian checking in one last time...
I'm entirely out of the business of investigating white collar schemes and schemers, but, occasionally, there's time to sit back and enjoy some follow up reading on the stock markets and my last case, YBM Magnex. Having personally spent countless hours researching and investigating the activities of YBM Magnex, Semion Mogilevich et al, it's interesting to see the fallout from this particular case (and, eventually, how folks like former Ontario Premier and YBM director David Peterson et al will explain their involvement).
The saga of YBM Magnex began to receive expansive coverage through such regional U.S. newspapers as The Bucks County Courier Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News in mid-May 1998. The first American print journal to give extensive national coverage to related subject matter was The Village Voice with its publication of Robert Friedman's May 26 1998 cover story, “The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World”. However, word of the criminal activities of Russia's Semion Mogilevich (and the alleged use of Arigon/YBM as a money laundering conduit by the Russian mafia) was widely accessible long before May 1998 on the internet and in European print journals. As early as 1995/96 newspapers and magazines in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and countries formerly of the Soviet Union, carried details of such activities. By at least 1997 (and likely earlier) various news articles and police intelligence reports were accessible on-line to anyone with an internet connection.
On my own web-site (@ imagen.net ) I began publishing analyses of the YBM Magnex scam in March 1998 (following the first stock market exposes of YBM which appeared in Canada Stockwatch). In April 1998 I alerted virtually all major Canadian media outlets to YBM's Russian mafia links (including Mogilevich and another “godfather”, Sergei Mikhailov). The story gained international attention when dozens of U.S. federal agents raided YBM's Newtown, Pennsylvania headquarters on May 13 1998. Within days of the raid, the YBM story (and the history of Mogilevich et al in the U.K.) appeared on television news, and in newspapers and magazines around the world - from London's The Observer and The Financial Times to Hungary's HVG and The Financial Post and The Globe and Mail in Canada.
In May of 1999, David Baines, a reporter with The Vancouver Sun newspaper, and I received a National Newspaper Award (Canada's top print journalism award) for our breaking coverage of the YBM-Russian mafia story.
In handing out the award, the NNA noted:
“The Vancouver Sun's David Baines, working with freelance securities investigator and writer Adrian du Plessis, unraveled the intriguing tale of YBM Magnex International Inc., the Canadian company that operated as a money laundering vehicle for the Russian mafia. The Sun began its early work on the company's murky business dealings and links to organized crime even as investors were driving its share prices to record levels on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Judges called it a thoroughly comprehensive effort that combined extraordinary initiative, research, analysis and writing.”
Well, it was a fascinating investigation and time -- and, hopefully, the various players involved will be pursued more successfully than has been witnessed (with the principals, brokers et al) in the Bre-X case.
For more information on YBM Magnex, visit the howenow web-site @ imagen.net |
