Re: Trump Oil - Riosun - ABFG: The smoking gun on Sklar
Fenway Resources Ltd - Team Trump revealed
Fenway Resources Ltd FWY
Shares issued 7,735,215 1997-05-02 close $7.6
Tuesday Feb 17 1998
SKLAR AND JANDA RE-APPEAR
by Brent Mudry
As Fenway Resources prepares to defend its hoped-for reverse takeover of Trump Oil, BC securities regulators will likely be especially interested in the roles of two behind-the-scenes players. They are Lucky Janda and Gerry Sklar, two veteran VSE promoters often known as the Lucky and Gerry team. The two promoters were not named in the BC Securities Commission's temporary freeze order on the proposed takeover on Friday, but their ties with Trump are timely. The BCSC's move is the latest setback for Fenway and its dreams of building a massive cement plant in the Philippines.
The BCSC claims it red-flagged the Fenway-Trump deal -- and well it might -- over concerns about Ranbir "Ron" Singh Dhaliwal, a suspended VSE broker who introduced Trump to Fenway. Mr Dhaliwal's broker-to-finder career change came after he was fined $100,000, as part of a $270,000 sanction, last year by the VSE, which also withdrew his registration, over various indiscretions involving Hollywood Trenz, another US bulletin board promotion. In its notice, the commission also raised numerous questions about Trump, and wondered aloud how this tiny bulletin board stock reached a US$3.19 market price in early January. This "contrasts with its apparent lack of assets, its apparent lack of business success, its lack of any business venture, or off-market equity transactions," stated BCSC executive director Michael Watson.
Trump's Fenway deal has been in the works since last year, and on October 1, the boards of the two companies disclosed preliminary details of the reverse takeover. "Trump has been seeking a promising asset of merit for some time," stated Trump president Dave Sidhu and Fenway director Leonard Taylor in a joint release. Trump's last "promising asset of merit" lasted little more than a month. On August 18, Trump revealed it had abandoned a deal for sapphires, emeralds and gold in Madagascar. This Madagascar gem deal brought the promotional gem, Mr Sklar, on board.
To gain a better appreciation of Trump's history, a glance back last spring to Riosun Resources, an unrelated company, is helpful. A year ago, in January 1997, Riosun's promotion was in full swing. The stock shot up from $1.20 in late January to $5.50 by February 24, trading more than 3.6 million shares in a month, before the VSE moved in and halted trading. Riosun claimed there were no new corporate developments to account for the stock's rise, beyond talk of emerald explorations in Madagascar. The VSE first referred to a single unidentified "unacceptable individual." A few weeks later Riosun disclosed it agreed not to allow "the acceptable individuals identified by the VSE" to be involved with the company.
This pair of undesirables, whose identities were never officially disclosed, were Lucky Janda and Gerald Sklar. Mr Janda had been involved with Riosun for about three years, although he left the board of its predecessor Massey Mercantile in September 1996. Mr Sklar was never an officer or director of either company, although he is believed to have been involved in Riosun's affairs. Riosun's meteoric rise in January, close on the heels of some significant options transactions, alerted the VSE.
Mr Sklar, based in Calgary, and Mr Janda, based in Vancouver, are well known on Howe Street, although their acceptability to regulators has faded in recent years. Mr Sklar latest brush with publicity came last May, in a Stockwatch story under Interlock Consolidated Enterprises, relating a 1994 share-trading Alberta lawsuit between the Calgary office of C.M. Oliver and Thomas P. Devlin, one of his close associates. (Mr Devlin's latest publicity stemmed from January 1996, when close friend David Walsh appointed him as manager of special projects for Bre-X Minerals.) Mr Janda needs little introduction, but his latest brush with publicity stemmed from his share-shuffling roles with Cascadia Technology, Bill Travnik's asphalt company.
The Janda-Sklar team, anonymously purged by the VSE, officially severed their Riosun dealings last March. A month later, on May 20, Trump Oil was born on the bulletin board, after a name change from Care Financial Group. In September 1996, it acquired Care Concepts, a Nevada company targeting the US$1 billion market for wheelchair-accessible minivans. On May 19,1997, eight months later, the OTC bulletin board disclosed that Phoenix-based Care Financial would change its name to Trump Oil. By coincidence, the next day, the VSE delisted Fenway after a three-week halt, citing assorted irregularities. Amongst the company's indiscretions was issuing shares to insiders for a promise to pay.
In mid-July, Trump trumpeted a proposed reverse takeover of Saowani Development, a company based in the Democratic Republic of Madagascar. Mr Sklar was named a director of Trump, along with a man named Dror Morodov. In the proposed deal, Mr Morodov and Ms Saowani Chuaiphan planned to sell Saowani Development for three million shares of Trump.
By August, however, this Madagascar gem deal had also fallen apart for some reason. Then in early October Team Trump first unveiled the Fenway deal. Trump president Mr Sidhu did not return Stockwatch's call on Tuesday, while Fenway promoter John Wilson is somewhere in the Philippines.
(c) Copyright 1999 Canjex Publishing Ltd. canada-stockwatch.com
- Jeff |
