Absolutefuture.com SOUNDS like its mob linked. What do you think?
B.C. Securities Commission - Street Wire
SEC, feds target Cons. Fortress ex-president Andrews
B.C. Securities Commission *BCSC
Tue 13 Nov 2001 Street Wire
See Consolidated Fortress Resources Inc (CFR) Street Wireby Brent Mudry
While Vancouver broker Trevor Koenig of Union Securities has been the star
Howe Street target of American authorities in the past three months,
London-based penny stock promoter Graham Andrews, Colorado broker Eugene
Geiger and Spanish-based Dutch financier Alfred Peeper have also emerged in
starring roles in the past month.
The trio are named as defendants in the United States Securities Exchange
Commission's prosecution of Absolutefuture.com, while Mr. Andrews is also
named in a related criminal complaint regarding the OTC Bulletin Board
promotion, one of Mr. Koenig's rig jobs.
Mr. Andrews quietly stepped down as president of Consolidated Fortress
Resources Inc., a Canadian Venture Exchange promotion on Oct. 26, more than
three weeks after he was named in an Oct. 1 sealed criminal complaint filed
in the Southern District of New York. The Absolutefuture.com complaint was
unsealed by Oct. 3, when the other criminal defendant, New York penny stock
promoter Roger DeTrano, was arrested.
Michael Graye was arrested the next day, Oct. 4, in a separate SDNY
criminal complaint with Mr. DeTrano, who allegedly conspired to help the
controversial Vancouver accountant rig his embryonic Vinex Wines promotion.
Mr. Andrews, Mr. DeTrano, Mr. Graye and Mr. Koenig, arrested crossing the
border on the Labour Day weekend, were all snared in co-ordinated stings
featuring the same dirty promoter-turned-informant. (By coincidence, Mr.
Graye and Mr. Andrews both have dual citizenships in the exotic offshore
enclave of Monaco.)
The SEC troubles of Mr. Andrews came as a surprise to the folks at Cons.
Fortress, according to company lawyer James Harris of Watson Goepel Maledy.
"We all know him to be a person of great integrity. We are all quite
shocked," Mr. Harris told Stockwatch on Tuesday. "Our understanding is that
he has to spend his full time fighting that full situation to protect his
reputation."
Lawyer Mr. Harris confirms Mr. Andrews faxed his resignation in late
October, and there have been a number of E-mails back and forth since then,
with company officials offering their support to their hastily departed
president. Neither Mr. Harris nor rookie replacement president Ali Alibhai
were aware of the criminal prosecution of Mr. Andrews until informed by
Stockwatch.
"We really know nothing about the Absolutefuture situation," says Mr.
Harris. The corporate counsel explains that Mr. Andrews is an "oil guy,"
and Cons. Fortress is no longer an oil and gas promotion.
Mr. Andrews had been a senior director of Cons. Fortress and its
predecessor, Fortress Resources Inc., since April, 1997, and served stints
as its president since about 1999. The controversial financier acquired a
27-per-cent stake in Fortress in 1997 by buying the company's 750,000
escrow shares.
In recent years, Mr. Andrews has been a familiar face in deals on Howe
Street, the centre of dealings for the former Vancouver Stock Exchange,
which was dubbed Scam Capital of the World by satirist Joe Queenan in
Forbes magazine a decade ago. Mr. Andrews has served directorship stints
with a number of penny stock companies listed on the Canadian Venture
Exchange, its predecessor the Vancouver and Alberta stock exchanges, and
the Montreal Exchange.
The British businessman had a rather odd career trajectory, slipping into
the penny stock world after achieving some success in more distinguished
quarters. According to regulatory filings, Mr. Andrews graduated with a
first-class honours degree in mathematics at Oxford University and a PhD in
mathematics from a university in Edinburgh. After that, the mathematician
moved on to senior corporate finance positions with such blue-chip firms as
British Petroleum, Chase Investment Bank, NatWest Bank and W I Carr, which
is part of the Banque Indosuez Group.
Mr. Andrews then took his upper-crust credentials to the penny stock hotbed
of Howe Street, where he apparently kicked off with a one-year stint in
1992-93 as a director of Robert G. Hunter's ADI Technologies Inc., starting
soon after ADI's debut on the VSE and leaving just before secretive Swiss
financier and purported money launderer Carlo Civelli's Clarion Finanz AG
emerged as a major shareholder.
After getting his feet wet on Howe Street, Mr. Andrews popped up a few
years later, in 1995-96, as a director of Robert Atkinson's Dimitra
Developments Corp., renamed Jeda Petroleum Ltd. In 1999, Mr. Andrews also
joined the board of another Canadian penny stock promotion, Vantex Oil, Gas
& Minerals Ltd., which moved from the Montreal Exchange to the CDNX on Oct.
1, and he recently served as chairman of York Energy Ltd., which is listed
on the OFEX Trading Facility in London.
Until Mr. Andrews's troubles with U.S. authorities came to light, Cons.
Fortress's most notable directors were Richard Bullock, who replaced Sydney
Belzberg as president of the VSE shell in April, 1995, and headed the
company until passing the reigns to Mr. Andrews in about 1999, and his son
Craig Bullock.
The father-and-son Bullocks resigned as Cons. Fortress directors in June,
2000, coincidentally two months after some unflattering coverage by The
Vancouver Sun. Reporter David Baines revealed that Keith King, a former
Nevis stockbroker wanted on fraud and forgery charges in South Africa and
kicked out of the Isle of Man, had set up shop in Vancouver and had
apparently hired Craig Bullock.
The sole officer of Mr. King's Vancouver-based FN Services (Canada) Ltd.,
an apparent derivation from the fugitive's Nevis-based First Nevisian
Stockbrokers Ltd., was the junior Bullock. The Sun noted that father
Richard Bullock, although not accused of any wrongdoing, was a close
associate of Gary Stanhiser of California, the former Seventh Day Adventist
minister who fleeced his flock through an illegal offshore private
placement on Howe Street and was banned from the B.C. stock market for life
by the British Columbia Securities Commission.
This March, Stockwatch and The Sun reported that Richard Bullock was dubbed
a shill for controversial offshore consultant Jerome Schneider in a
detailed unsealed Internal Revenue Service affidavit. The document,
supporting a search warrant raid on the Vancouver offices of Mr. Schneider,
referred to Mr. Bullock as a key associate of Mr. Schneider, fronting for
the consultant's Premier Corporate Services Ltd. and Premier Management
Services Ltd.
"On paper, it will show that Bullock owns the majority of the shares of
stock of these companies while Schneider owns a minority share. The
corporations are set up this way so that it appears that Schneider doesn't
own or control them," stated IRS Special Agent Harold Durrette in a 44-page
affidavit, sworn before United States Magistrate Judge Carla Woehrle in
U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
(Jack Blum, who kicked off the Schneider investigation in January, 1997,
told Stockwatch at an international money-laundering conference in
Vancouver in the fall of 2000 that Mr. Schneider had reportedly last been
seen in Mexico City. Mr. Blum, an offshore finance and money laundering
expert, is best known as a key investigator for the U.S. Senate Foreign
Relations Committee on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International
probe.)
Prior to shilling and fronting for Mr. Schneider's Vancouver operations,
Mr. Bullock had the misfortune of appearing in various controversial B.C.
cases in recent years. The BCSC sought records from a Vancouver law firm on
now-defunct Vancouver brokerage Vantage Securities, regarding an alleged
March, 1998, asset diversion from Vantage, allegedly involving fraudster
Mr. Stanhiser.
Mr. Bullock has also served stints as a director of various companies
listed on the former VSE, and he stepped in as a director of Ultra Pure
Water Systems (Canada) Inc. in May, 1995. This was two months after the
former Alberta Stock Exchange halted trading in shares of the controversial
promotion of Gordon Brent Pierce and referred the case to the RCMP for a
13-month criminal investigation.
Mr. Bullock was not a target in the criminal or regulatory probes of Ultra
Pure, or any other probes.
In the serendipity of Howe Street, offshore connections and mysteries are
often intertwined.
The star client of Union Securities broker Trevor Koenig, in the
Absolutefuture.com rig job, which featured Cons. Fortress's Mr. Andrews,
the New York Mafia-linked promotion of WAMEX Holdings Inc. and related
bulletin-board rig jobs was career fraudster Edward Durante, whose record
of run-ins with U.S. authorities dates back 26 years. Mr. Durante funnelled
most of his Union proceeds through a money laundering account at Bank of
Montreal's main Vancouver branch, held by Itex Corp. fraud mastermind Terry
Neal's Exchange Bank & Trust.
Mr. Neal founded EBT in Nevis and nearby Nauru in the wake of the Itex
fraud, and he purportedly relocated to Nevis himself for a while. Nauru was
also the prime offshore domicile used by Mr. Schneider, who was fronted by
Mr. Bullock, another former president of Cons. Fortress.
Although Mr. Schneider and Mr. Neal both ostensibly operated through sham
banks in Nauru and allegedly recruited potential clients in Vancouver,
their operations appear to be independent.
(c) Copyright 2001 Canjex Publishing Ltd. stockwatch.com |
