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Non-Tech : Thom Calandra, CBS Marketwatch and IVAN - Exposing the TRUTH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SOROS who wrote (53)	11/11/2003 1:30:58 PM
From: Wolff	Respond to of 167

Forbes targets Robert Friedland Ex-Vancouver promoter reported to be talking up prospective project in Mongolia David Baines Vancouver Sun Tuesday, November 11, 2003 canada.com Former Vancouver mining promoter Robert Friedland is once again battling bad press, this time from one of the most prestigious business magazines in the United States. In an article entitled "The Promoter," Forbes reports in its latest edition that Friedland has been "talking up" a prospective copper-gold project in a remote location of Mongolia, which he describes as "one of the major copper and gold discoveries in the world." The Turquoise Hill project is controlled by Friedland's Ivanhoe Mines, which has soared from $3.15 in July to a high of $15.15 last week on the Toronto Stock Exchange. At that price, Friedland's 41-per-cent stake is worth about $1.3 billion. "The stock is also being cheered on by stock analysts and newsletter writers who are brushing aside the self-dealing through which Friedland has increased his stake," the Forbes article notes. "Shareholders also seem to be dismissing Friedland's past legal battles with the U.S. government, his cozy relationship with the thugs running Burma and the lack of in-depth engineering analysis of Turquoise Hill." The article says that several years earlier, before Ivanhoe acquired rights to the Mongolian property, Friedland arranged for the company to pay him millions of shares to purchase and finance a Tasmanian mine which proved to be a "dog." With so many shares, the magazine notes, it doesn't matter whether the project proves commercially viable, the discovery has already made Friedland rich, at least on paper. Since the article was published, the stock has dropped more than $3 to $12.05. In a release Monday, Friedland returned fire, charging that the article "suppresses and obfuscates the truth about Ivanhoe's discovery and its project transactions and falsely defames me by impugning my business ethics."

To: SOROS who wrote (53)	11/11/2003 1:31:55 PM
From: Wolff	Respond to of 167

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 canada.com