Forbes targets Robert Friedland (part2)
He said the magazine "apparently did not speak to any of the scores of independent experts -- professional geologists, engineers and analysts -- who have personally visited the Mongolia project and confirmed the world-scale scope of the discovery that is continuing to unfold at this time."
He dismissed the article as a "contrived, one-sided account. As a commentary column, it would be deeply flawed; but masquerading as news reporting, it is a shameful deception."
In a sidebar called "Helping Hands," Forbes mentions that Ivanhoe has received a big boost from Thom Calandra, a columnist at CBS MarketWatch, a business-news Web site.
"Calandra has plugged Ivanhoe Mines in numerous columns and has gone on Ivanhoe-bankrolled trips to Mongolia, Beijing and London. He freely admits that he is 'a large holder' of stock in Friedland's Ivanhoe Energy and has recommended both Ivanhoe Mines and Ivanhoe Energy in his newsletter," the magazine states.
Although not mentioned, Calandra is also a big booster of Crystallex International Corp., a controversial former Vancouver-based mining company that is attempting to develop the Las Cristinas gold property in Venezuela.
It is not the first time Friedland has been criticized for his promotion of Ivanhoe, which he took public in 1997 under the name Indochina Goldfields.
In a June 1997 article entitled "Your risk, his reward," Canadian Business magazine described how Friedland, before taking the company public, parcelled out relatively cheap shares to broker-friends, newsletter writers and mutual funds.
"The cheapest shares, however, went to Friedland himself," the magazine reported. "He paid $3 million US for 16.8 million shares -- a deemed price of just 25 cents per share -- making him the company's largest single shareholder.
"By the time he was ready to go public, investors had been whipped into a frenzy ... Not surprisingly, they devoured Indochina Goldfields' public offering, buying 18 million shares at $15 each."
It was the largest financing in Canadian junior exploration history, but the company did not live up to Friedland's billing and the stock plunged to pennies before he changed the company's name and began promoting the Mongolian project.
dbaines@png.canwest.com
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