This was just posted to the AWLT web site:
TO: All Araldica Shareholders
FROM: Frank J. Landi Sr., President
DATE: 18 August 1998
SUBJECT: WINE INVESTMENT NEWS
To those of you who are now inclined to accept the subject publications's statements as the gospel truth, here follows still more accurate information, and opinion, from the company and I, which you
will not find in the referenced publication.
In response to many "What the hell is going on" Internet comments:
Nothing is going on except that the company continues to successfully recover from the various acquisition and financing defaults of recent months, most of which have already been contracted again (or are about to be).
That Wine Investment News is continuing to print a combination of (a) absolute lies, mixed with (b) misleading innuendo and (c) finally- an occasional grain of part of the truth (like all good lies), is an
unfortunate side event with which the company has to live (see the company's press release tomorrow regarding this matter).
As to their most outrageous new statements:
1. We have never sold wine without the appropriate license. We purchased the assets of a (New York licensed) Staten Island retail store and sold wine- in New York State only- through that license. The fact that Araldica got defrauded by the seller in that transaction (who happens to be one of the information sources for Wine Investment News, and has not taken the fact that he is about to be sued very well) does not mean that Araldica did anything wrong at any time.
2. We are not "scrambling" to finance the Danielle Cheese acquisition. We are reinstating previously executed contracts for investment banking and collateralized lending arrangements to provide the
funds required to complete the transaction. We would provide more information on this subject, but we cannot, since counsel to the seller has demanded that no public discussions of this matter be
permitted, and we have accepted this demand as one of the terms and conditions of the agreement in principal to settle the litigation.
3. No one has been misled, as some have suggested:
a. About the company:
All statements made by the company were accurate when made, and modified if subsequent events called for such modification.
b. About the company's Officers and Directors:
No one has ever suggested that there existed, in the background of any of these people, not a single event that could cause embarrassment if disclosed. My personal decision not to disclose the information recently brought to light by Wine Investment News, except to my associates, and to certain investors and our professional advisors, was legal and correct, and in the best interests of the company. It remains my personal opinion that these decades old events have no bearing on Araldica Wineries, Ltd.
Because of the allegations made against me personally, about my actions as CEO of another public company 20 years ago, which were resolved at trial 15 years ago (however unsatisfactorfly, from my
perspective), I made public disclosure of these events for many years, after which time my personal legal advice was that I no longer was obliged to continually volunteer to disclose and discuss these
matters.
To those of you who feel differently, (i) you can see more discussion of this matter on our web site, and (ii) I volunteer to make available to you a complete full disclosure file on my personal legal
problems from the period 1978 to 1983; all you have to do to obtain such is to ask, and it will be sent.
My final comment to you on the subject is this: If any of you want to go through the exercise, I will personally sit down with you, and my attorney, and prove to you that my 1983 conviction was a miscarriage of justice, and that I did not do the crime- although I did do the time. There is also a less time consuming way to make my point: Just ask any attorney to whom you have access the following question:
How can an innocent defendant, against whom there is no evidence, who is charged as the "principal" in a fraud under 18 USC 1941 and 1943, get acquitted at trial, when he is put on trial with co-defendants that have been charged as "aiders and abettors", and who are in fact guilty of fraud, perpetrated against the innocent defendant, and against whom the evidence of guilt is overwhehning?
The answer is, the innocent defendant cannot be acquitted; there is no way under the law.
Since that is what I lived through, because I made the mistake of upsetting the SEC (by embarrassing them in a civil proceeding which they flied against me and my company, and lost), I have to now sit
here and take the vicious- and irrelevant-cheap shots from vermin like those at Wine Investment News- because I am not yet sufficiently wealthy, thanks to having had my life ruined, to be able to hire the million dollar legal talent that will doubtless be able to figure out a way to overturn the 15 year old conviction against me, at some point in the future.
Finally, I believe we have, to date, already responded, in our prior web site postings, to the other falsehoods recently printed about the company by Wine Investment News.
We will continue to release correct information in response to the diatribe which we expect will continue to emanate from this source, since this may unfortunately not abate until our lawyers have
made further progress- which we anticipate will shortly be the case, and which we will promptly announce.
Frank J. Landi, Sr.
President and CEO
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