Mar. 13, 2007: Money & Drugs

Securities Investigation, RCMP - IMET, Backdating, RIM, Balsillie

Canadian seniors group calls for enforcement reform -- Is it time for a national securities cop?

It isn’t that Canada doesn’t have securities laws; it has lots of them. But there seems to be a problem with enforcement. , By David Clarke, March 12, 2007, via newsbeat1

www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti
cle?AID=/20070312/FREE/70308027

OTTAWA — [....] Even the Mounties agree that reform is needed.

“We’re one of the only Western countries without the authority to compel people to talk,” Superintendent John Sliter, director of the RCMP’s integrated market enforcement branch [IMET], said at a conference last month.

Although provincial securities commissions have the power to require witnesses to provide evidence during investigations, Canada’s criminal authorities have no similar powers.

Does that strike you as strange? Consider what they investigate, to say nothing of the knowledge of accounting they would require. This is not ordinary police work; it is very specialized.

The branch’s teams have tackled most of Canada’s biggest securities investigations, including those involving Nortel Networks Corp. of Brampton, Ontario, Royal Group Technologies Ltd. of Woodridge, Ontario, Portus Alternative Asset Management Inc. of Toronto, and Norbourg Asset Management Inc. and Norshield Asset Management (Canada) Ltd., both of Montreal.

But the RCMP has charged no one in the cases under investigation.

Accounting Problem at RIM results in Balsillie relinquishing his position

Mr. Balsillie, a Harvard business graduate says RIM was tripped up by complicated accounting rules around the issuance of stock option grants that were different in the U.S. and Canada.

Business as usual at RIM, Balsillie says -- despite "So did we do backdating? Yeah. We did backdating."

Relinquishes chairman post; co-CEOs will pay for cost of internal review , Simon Avery, Tech Reporter, Mar. 2007

www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
LAC.20070306.RRIMBALSILLIE06/TPStory/Business

[....] Jim Balsillie resigned as chairman of the BlackBerry maker after taking responsibility for errors that will lead to an approximate $250-million (U.S.) restatement of earnings. It is also still possible that the bookkeeping problems could lead to disciplinary action by securities regulators in the United States and Canada, which are conducting their own separate reviews of how RIM accounted for its stock option grants.

... Waterloo, Ont., ... "We're still co-CEOs. [....]

Balsillie says RIM was tripped up by complicated accounting rules around the issuance of stock option grants that were different in the U.S. and Canada. [....]

backdating [....]

Would it not be elementary to think that backdating is not quite the thing to do? It is obvious to me that stock options that could be dated whenever you wished, would be dated so as to make the most money ... but that is in the eyes of a member of the non-RIM stock owners. Perhaps it is more complicated if you own the company.


More here: Balsillie steps down as RIM chairman

www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.ht
ml?id=f87e86ed-070e-4e68-a55e-6e8c1117f33e



Neighbourhood Druggies

Parents: "These drugs are widely available at school dances," reveals Det. Sgt. David Malcolm. "They're widely available at raves."

Accidental Find Leads Cops To One Of The Biggest Drug Busts In Toronto History , Monday March 12, 2007, via newsbeat1

www.citynews.ca/news/news_8688.aspx

It is, by any measurement, a staggering find.

Toronto Police have confirmed they've helped make one of the biggest Ecstasy busts in the city's history.

[....] What they found inside stunned everyone involved - at least 140,000 Ecstasy pills and 214 kilograms of MMDA, worth an estimated $21.4 million on the streets. [....]

Link for this:

How to Spot An Ecstasy Lab In Your Neighbourhood

It goes on all the time behind closed doors. And those doors may be closer to your home than you think. No one who lived near the house where one of the biggest drug busts in history was made last week seemed to have any clue about what was going on inside.

Yet there are ways to spot an Ecstasy lab and the suspicious activity it causes. Here's what to look for:

Do not miss reading that list from the Abbotsford B.C. Police Dept.