Agoracom versus The OSC: The best bits of the settlement

Here's the link to the OSC settlement agreement in the matter of Agoracom. Here are the best bits (my personal faves are clauses 24 and 25...but check them all out and see what you think):

17. Agoracom’s representatives serviced the client hubs by moderating their discussion forums and posting information and news to the forums. In order to post comments on the discussion forums, users are required to create a username and provide an e-mail address.

18. Tsiolis and Kondakos required their representatives, as part of their daily responsibilities, to post anonymously to some client forums using aliases. To post messages anonymously, the representatives created fictitious usernames and posed as investors blending in with other users, investors and interested persons. Representatives had between 40-50 aliases (some had up to 200) and were required to make up to 2 posts per hub per day or risk having their pay docked. On occasion, Agoracom staff conversed with themselves on the forums using different aliases.

19. During the Material Time:

1. more than 24,000 alias posts were created from within Agoracom on client and non-client hubs;
2. more than 670 alias user names were created by representatives of Agoracom and used on client and non-client hubs;
3. alias posts originated from Tsiolis’ residence; and
4. posts by Agoracom representatives, using their aliases, were occasionally promotional and promoted purchasing and/or holding stock.

20. Neither the public users nor the majority of Agoracom’s clients were aware that representatives of Agoracom were posting on their hubs using aliases. In some cases, Agoracom reported the number of posts and shareholder inquiries answered by Agoracom’s representatives to clients on a monthly basis, and failed to disclose that a portion of the posts and shareholder inquiries were created by Agoracom’s own representatives. For certain clients, alias posts by Agoracom’s representatives represented a significant proportion of the postings within the forum.

21. The Respondents also took steps to actively conceal the alias posting activity by its representatives. In March 2009, when the business development representative, Scott Purkis, revealed that he was an Agoracom representative posting with an alias, the Respondents posted an “Official Statement” stating that these actions were carried out by a single individual and that Agoracom would be taking steps within next sixty (60) days to ensure that this would never happen again. The message posted by the Respondents to the public in relation to Purkis’ alias postings was misleading given that Tsiolis and Kondakos knew and instructed many representatives to create and use multiple aliases to post on several of the client forums. In addition, Tsiolis and Kondakos were aware that representatives continued to post using aliases after this Statement was released.

22. The posting activity described above, mandated by the Respondents, was undertaken, in part, to create an appearance of greater interest in the securities of some of Agoracom’s clients.

IV. INTERCEPTION OF PRIVATE MESSAGES

23. Another feature available on the Agoracom platform is a “private messaging” service which, according to Agoracom’s web site, allows users to have “direct and private contact with other Agoracom members.”

24. From July 2008 to February 2009, Kondakos intercepted private messages sent between public users for the purpose of gathering information about reporting issuers and issuers, in which he was personally invested.

25. Kondakos forwarded private messages to a personal friend who was not associated with Agoracom and provided this individual with administrative access to the Agoracom website. This individual also intercepted private messages between public users, and forwarded these private messages to Kondakos.

There also clause 26 which says...

"By engaging in the conduct described above, the Respondents have acted contrary to the public interest."

...to which we all shout "No Shit Sherlock". And now the best bits of the Order issued today, November 12th, and linked here:

IT IS ORDERED THAT:

1. The settlement agreement is approved.

2. The registration granted to Agoracom Capital Inc. under Ontario securities law be terminated on the date of the Commission’s order.

3. The registrations granted to Tsiolis and Kondakos (the “Individual Respondents”) under Ontario securities law be suspended for a period of 10 years commencing on the date of the Commission’s order, and the Individual Respondents are prohibited from becoming or acting as a registrant or as an investment fund manager for a period of 10 years commencing on the date of the Commission’s order.

4. The Individual Respondents be permanently prohibited from becoming or acting as a director or officer of any client of Agoracom or any client of Agoracom’s affiliates or subsidiaries;

5. The Individual Respondents be prohibited from becoming or acting as a director or officer of any reporting issuer, registrant or investment fund manager for a period of 5 years commencing on the date of the Commission’s order.

6. The Respondents will not trade or invest in any client of Agoracom or any client of Agoracom’s affiliates or subsidiaries, save and except for options or placements that are part of a contractual compensation arrangement.

7. The Individual Respondents be reprimanded.

8. Within 24 hours of the date of the Commission’s order, the Respondents will issue a press release, pre-approved by Staff (the “Press Release”), which shall include an electronic link to the within Settlement Agreement. The press release shall be posted on the home page of www.agoracom.com for a period of 6 months commencing on the date of the Commission’s order.

9. The Respondents will pay $125,000, to be allocated under s. 3.4(2)(b) of the Act to or for the benefit of third parties.

10. The Respondents will pay the costs of the Commission’s investigation in the amount of $25,000.

11. The Respondents, jointly and severally agree to make the payments ordered pursuant to paragraphs 9 and 10 above as follows:
    

    1. $50,000 by certified cheque when the Commission approves this Settlement Agreement; and
    2. 2 post-dated cheques, each in the amount of $50,000.00, dated 9 months and 18 months following the approval of this Settlement

You'll note a marked difference between the ruling and the Agoracom version of events as posted on their site tonight, too. For example, Georgey says the $150k fine is "....fair given the resources expended by OSC staff..." but as the ruling clearly states, just $25,000 of the $150,000 fine is to cover the OSC costs. There's also the little matter of the 5 year and 10 year bans that he glossed over....but details, yeah?

ATW Gold (ATW.v): What can it all mean?

The scumball fraudster front-running piece of crap Graham Harris bails even more:

ATW Gold Corp. (ATW)						As of April 15th, 2010
Filing Date	Transaction Date	Insider Name	Ownership Type	Securities	Nature of transaction	# or value acquired or disposed of	Unit Price
Apr 15/10	Apr 09/10	Harris, Graham	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Disposition in the public market	-194,500	$0.140
Apr 15/10	Apr 07/10	Harris, Graham	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Disposition in the public market	-5,500	$0.150
Apr 15/10	Apr 05/10	Harris, Graham	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Disposition in the public market	-300,000	$0.160
Apr 15/10	Apr 12/10	Harris, Graham	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Disposition in the public market	-50,000	$0.140
Apr 15/10	Apr 05/10	Harris, Graham	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Disposition in the public market	-50,000	$0.155
Apr 15/10	Apr 01/10	Harris, Graham	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Disposition in the public market	-100,000	$0.160

Let's remember that the above is the tip of a very dirty and illegally run iceberg. Let's also note that the OSC hasn't said a word about the illegal, frontrunning, late filing activities of Graham Harris and of the other scumball insider dealers at ATW.v. And finally let's remember what that other twisting scumball Peter 'Holier Than Thou' Grandich said about Graham Harris way back when these two were in cahoots and fobbing worthless paper off to the masses:

I’ve known Graham Harris, one of ATW’s Directors, for almost 20 years. He’s always been a straight shooter, particularly when he was in the financial arena, and finding a straight shooter in the financial arena is like finding a needle in a haystack. So I’ve always had confidence in his honesty. He was very excited about this project. He brought me in about a year ago; it just keeps being advanced. We should be in production there in short order.

Suspicious actions by Agoracom

In the light of the OSC action against online pumper's paradise and illegally acting bullboard host Agoracom, some strange things are happening over at that site

• Top example concerns Evolving Gold (EVG.v), a company that paid the grandaddy bullshit pumper Peter Grandich thousands of dollars per month to pump, pump and pump again its message while Grandich was at Agoracom. Now that the Grandichrat has left the sinking ship, by some sheer coincidence Agoracom has wiped its Evolving Gold discussion board clean off the map. Go there now and all you get is an innocent "oh, we don't have a hub for this stock" message, where before it was the pump central for Grandich's shiller activities. Can you smell fish? Yeah, me too.
  

• But Evolving Gold is not the only example. Firestone Ventures (FV.v) was a paying client of Agoracom until recently. It too had a hub at the site. Now it too has all its records wiped clean and Agoracom claiming that it doesn't cover the stock.

• This is also true for ATW Gold (ATW.v), the notorious pump-job promoted by Peter Grandich at the top of his voice in 2008 and 2009 (cos they paid the charlatan), only to be found out last year as a front bullshit liars, mining ineptitude and inside trading activity nothing short of criminal. It too has had its hub disappeared by Agoracom.

Those are just three this author found on a quick flyover of this scammy bullboard operator. If you know of any more, feel free to send over a headsup.


UPDATE: Longtime sparring partner and 100% good egg sez_me_man chimes in with another (in comments section below and re-pasted here):

Hey Otto,

Grandich erased history on Geologix as well. (GIX.TO).

Not all history disappears, however. From "top pick" to not a word.

Keep up the fine investigative reporting.

M.

Agoracom, the OSC and reader feedback

The OSC action against the Grandich-sponsoring promopump vehicle known to the world as Agoracom has had plenty of reaction. For example, this Globe&Mail article is currently the number one most read article at the newspaper today. Here's how the note starts:

For the past several years Agoracom Investor Relations Corp. has run a burgeoning Internet forum for attention-starved mining, energy and tech companies, where investors could gather to muse about the stock they hold in those firms.

But what the companies were never told, the Ontario Securities Commission alleges, is that much of the online chatter about those stocks was instead the work of Agoracom's own employees.

Operating under dozens of online aliases, and sometimes holding fake conversations with themselves, the staff actively tried to push up share prices, the regulator alleges. CONTINUES HERE

Meanwhile, first-hand insight was provided to IKN today by Reader 'E', a person who over the months and years has closely followed the conversations at one of the stocks covered by Agoracom. We're going to keep the name of the stock out of this post to protect the possibly innocent, but it's worth mentioning that it's a pennyshare company that this author has never owned. With that said, reader 'E' mailed today and gave insight as a more perceptive user of Agoracom message boards:

Per the scumbags at Agoracom (caught your blog quick thoughts), i agree wholeheartly and i hope they get what's coming to them. I know first hand of their bullshit aliases conjured up when XXX (ticker withheld) was a client of theirs. Aliases talking with one another as if they were buddies in the stock but had no flippin clue of the company, not a clue! The postings stopped once the contract between Agoracom & XXX stopped, go figure how that all works. With a little backtracking which i did the light bulb came one. I'm kinda pissed off about that as they took IR fees each and every month. Anyways, i hope the OSC is dead serious on straightening their act up.

For what it's worth* your humble scribe stopped reading bullboard guff months ago (bar the odd occasion when a link to a post is sent to me by a friend or a foe....usually a foe, in fact) but what I will say is that reader 'E' is a totally trustworthy person and someone who I would support on any given occasion (even though we happen to disagree on the merits of the above pennystock stock in question that he likes). In other words, if reader 'E' says that what's been going on over at Agoracom is scammy, then it's scammy period.

*not much

I. Love. This.

The OSC grows a set of cojones and starts trying to clean up Grandichscumland. Viva! Let's hope this is just the first of many crackdowns against scumbag promopumpers.

IN THE MATTER OF THE SECURITIES ACT,
R.S.O. 1990, c. S.5 AS AMENDED

– and –

IN THE MATTER OF AGORACOM INVESTOR RELATIONS CORP.,
AGORA INTERNATIONAL ENTERPRISES CORP., GEORGE TSIOLIS and
APOSTOLIS KONDAKOS (a.k.a. PAUL KONDAKOS)

STATEMENT OF ALLEGATIONS
OF STAFF OF THE ONTARIO SECURITIES COMMISSION

Staff of the Ontario Securities Commission (the “Commission”) make the following allegations:

I. OVERVIEW

1. This proceeding relates to fraudulent on-line posting activity by Agoracom Investor Relations Corp. (“AIRC”) and Agora International Enterprises Corp. (“AIEC”) (collectively “Agoracom”), an on-line investment relations firm, and its management, George Tsiolis (“Tsiolis”) and Apostolis Kondakos, a.k.a. Paul Kondakos (“Kondakos”) (collectively the “Respondents”) in breach of the Securities Act, R.S.O. 1990, c.S.5, as amended (the “Act”) and in a manner that was contrary to the public interest.

2. Staff allege that the Respondents’ course of conduct spanned from at least September 1, 2006 to July 31, 2009 (the “Material Time”).

II. THE RESPONDENTS

A. The Corporate Respondents

3. None of the corporate respondents were registered with the Commission in any capacity during the Material Time.

4. AIRC is an Ontario company incorporated on February 12, 2007. AIRC employs Agoracom representatives and contracts with clients to provide investor relations services.

5. AIEC is an Ontario company incorporated on April 23, 1997. Revenue from Agoracom gets reported to AIEC.

6. Together, AIRC and AIEC carry on business in Toronto, Ontario as “Agoracom” and perform the business of an online investor relations firm for public companies whose securities are publicly listed in Canada.

B. The Individual Respondents

7. Tsiolis is a resident of Toronto, Ontario and is the founder and a directing mind of Agoracom. Tsiolis is the sole director of AIEC, one of two directors of AIRC and is the registrant for the domain name “agoracom.com”.

8. Tsiolis was registered as an officer & director (trading) and shareholder, under the category of limited market dealer with Agoracom Capital Inc. from July 2, 2008 to September 28, 2009. Tsiolis has been registered as a dealing representative and approved as a permitted individual (officer, director and shareholder), under the category of exempt market dealer with Agoracom Capital Inc. since September 28, 2009.

9. Kondakos is a resident of Toronto, Ontario and is the other directing mind of Agoracom. Kondakos is an officer of AIRC.

10. Kondakos was registered as officer & director (trading) and approved as designated compliance officer, under the category of limited market dealer with Agoracom Capital Inc. from July 2, 2008 to September 28, 2009. Kondakos has been registered as a dealing representative and approved as a permitted individual (officer & director), under the category of exempt market dealer with Agoracom Capital Inc. since September 28, 2009. Kondakos has also been registered as ultimate designated person and chief compliance officer, under the category of exempt market dealer with Agoracom Capital Inc. since December 29, 2009.

III. FRAUDULENT POSTINGS BY AGORACOM MANAGEMENT AND REPRESENTATIVES

11. According to their website (www.agoracom.com), Agoracom “caters to the IR and marketing needs of small and micro cap public companies trading on the TSX [and] TSX Venture…”. Agoracom offers pricing models for its clients which incorporate a monthly fee and stock options equalling the greater of 250,000 shares or 0.5% of a company’s fully diluted outstanding share total at current prices.

12. Agoracom’s online content includes webcasts, podcasts, and blogs. Perusal of www.agoracom.com is free and open to the public. Visitors are directed to client and non-client issuer “hubs” created and maintained by Agoracom. Among the features available on a specific company’s hub is a discussion forum, relating to the issuers’ securities.

13. Agoracom’s representatives serviced the client hubs by moderating their discussion forums and posting information and news to the forums. In order to post comments on the discussion forums, users are required to create a username and provide an e-mail address.

14. Tsiolis and Kondakos required their representatives, as part of their daily responsibilities, to post anonymously to the client forums using aliases. To post messages anonymously, the representatives created fictitious usernames and posed as investors blending in with other users, investors and interested persons. Representatives had between 40-50 aliases (some had up to 200) and were required to make a requisite number of posts per hub per day or risk having their pay docked. On occasion, Agoracom staff conversed with themselves on the forums using different aliases.

15. Staff alleges that during the Material Time:

1. more than 24,000 alias posts were created from within Agoracom on client and non-client hubs;
2. more than 670 alias user names were created by representatives of Agoracom and used on client and non-client hubs;
3. alias posts originated from Tsiolis’ residence; and
4. posts by Agoracom representatives, using their aliases, were promotional and promoted purchasing and/or holding stock.

16. Neither the public users nor Agoracom’s clients were aware that representatives of Agoracom were posting on their hubs using aliases. In fact, the Respondents knowingly deceived clients about the traffic and activity generated on their hubs. In particular, Agoracom reported the number of posts and shareholder inquiries answered by Agoracom’s representatives to clients on a monthly basis, and failed to disclose that a portion of the posts and shareholder inquiries were created by Agoracom’s own representatives. For certain clients, alias posts by Agoracom’s representatives represented a significant proportion of the postings within the forum.

17. The Respondents knew or ought to have known that the posting activity described above put their clients at risk of being in breach of the TSX-V Corporate Finance Policies governing investor relations firm activities and compensation.

18. The Respondents also took steps to actively conceal the fraudulent posting activity by its representatives. In March 2009, when a representative revealed that he was an Agoracom representative posting with an alias, the Respondents posted an “Official Statement” stating that these actions were carried out by a single representative and that Agoracom would be taking steps within next sixty (60) days to ensure that this would never happen again. This message to the public was false and misleading given that Tsiolis and Kondakos knew and instructed many representatives to create and use multiple aliases to post on all of the client forums. In addition, Tsiolis and Kondakos were aware that representatives continued to post using aliases after this Statement was released.

19. Staff allege that posting activity described above, mandated by the Respondents, was undertaken to create a misleading appearance of greater interest and trading activity in the securities of Agoracom’s clients to:

1. induce clients to contract or continue to contract with Agoracom; and
2. increase the value of Agoracom’s stock options.

V. SUMMARY

20. As a result of the conduct described above, the Respondents, directly or indirectly, engaged or participated in an act, practice or course of conduct relating to securities that the Respondents knew or reasonably ought to have known perpetrated a fraud on persons and companies, contrary to section 126.1(b) of the Act.

21. Further, the conduct outlined above was abusive to the capital markets.

VI. CONDUCT CONTRARY TO SECURITIES LAW AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST

22. Staff allege that the conduct set out above of the Respondents violated Ontario securities law as specified and constituted conduct contrary to the public interest.

23. Staff reserve the right to make such other allegations as Staff may advise and the Commission may permit.

Dated at Toronto this 1st day of April, 2010

.

UPDATE: Agoracom has published a rebuttal, neatly sandwiched between two posts on Jesus at Easter from Grandich (why does the phrase "holier than thou" drift through my brain?). Here's the link to the scamster grandich's blog and here's the post link.

ECU Silver (ECU.to) and this week's coveted award

Yesterday evening around the cocktail hour, instead of getting on with the work I should have been doing your humble correspondent got into a conversation with someone we'll call An Investor Friend ('AIF'). It was in fact AIF that gave me an initial "hey look at the books of this dog" comment on ECU Silver (ECU.to) some moons ago and so the conversation turned to that stock. AIF regularly does something that I gave up doing a while ago, namely reading bullboards on stocks (for me a case of 'too much noise, not enough info' more than anything else). Anyway, my friend AIF started sending me links to comments made by ECU.to bulls recently written on the boards.

I was amazed. I had no idea.

There are, apparently, a whole army of self-appointed mining experts out there pushing this stock to the gullible and less informed. For sure this isn't a new story and it goes without saying that in typical bullyboy style pointing out a few facts about this arch-dog of a silver miner is immediately called an idiot (and much worse), but the way that solid facts are ignored, abuse is heaped and the jam tomorrow story is pumped non-stop on an organized, relay-style basis between several old hands smacks of something far more sinister. So on reading the junk sent over by AIF I whacked a few simple charts together. Here are four that anyone even remotely considering ECU as a trade should consider. This stuff, ladies and gentlemen, is BASIC.

First, assets.
I look at this and laugh. The claims of fixed asset worth are the only thing that makes this company attractive, but if ECU had to sell land to raise cash the final prices wouldn't be anywhere near the purely subjective numbers attached to its property assets as featured above. Pure smoke'n'mirrors. Meanwhile, real objective values in the form of current assets have been whittled to virtually nothing, this despite the BS hype over the cash flow that would be generated by the new oxide plant that's been running since early '09. And it's worth reminding ourselves that ECU.to actually raised cash via share placement in 2009! The cash netted by selling over 43 million shares to a naive market has all-but disappeared into this money pit. ECU.to is running a $99m deficit since inception, fer chrissakes! WHERE HAS ALL THE MONEY GONE?

Now the debt load at ECU.to.
How much airtime to the pushers and shillers give to this part of ECU.to? The company has virtually no cash ok, but what's with all the debt that comes due this year (and on which ECU paid $641k interest last quarter)? We hear all about the ridiculously hyped oxide mill (that's running out of mineral feed so quickly that the company has seemingly taken to stealing from its own JV partner) but any cash generated is just being used to pay off interest on loans pacted at 15% annual. Not to mention how the majority of that principle is now due soon...how on earth are they going to pay it off without reaming the people holding stock?

From those two, here's the utter trainwreck known as working capital.
What's your definition of "we have no money"? What's your definition of "we have squandered over $47m in cash since 2q07?". That's mine above. Let's make this really simple; if ECU doesn't raise at least $20m and soon, it won't have enough money to do anything. Not pay wages, not release more BS news releases, not offer its directors free shares and undated loans. IT HAS NO MONEY. Got it? And how do you think it's going to raise cash? Yep you got it, another bullshit dilutive financing. Right now I'd guess 50m shares at 40c (with the half warrant kicker, of course) but that could get much, much worse if the market wakes up to this stock and drives the PPS to where it belongs, because this company is also the living, breathing definition of "a sitting duck" right now.

And finally, just in case you think that the people running ECU.to are unfortunate victims of circumstance, here's how they've awarded themselves $5.89m in stock options in the last seven quarters.
Yes, that's right. Despite running the stock into the ground, getting way overburdened with debt due in less than 12 months and letting working capital swing from +$30m to -$17m in the space of just 18 months, the people that run ECU.to have awarded themselves a heap of bonus options; talk about a sense of entitlement (and that's putting it as mildly as possible).

But this week's coveted award doesn't go to ECU.to management. It is reserved for the message board shillers and bullshitters that proclaim themselves experts. Just by taking one quick look at the books, anyone with an ounce of ken about miners and how they run can see that this company is a disaster movie with no happy ending. Therefore those self-proclaimed 'experts' that troll public (and private) message boards are either pig-ignorant about miners (perfectly possible) or they are fully aware of the major problems faced by ECU Silver in its very immediate future and refuse to mention them in their non-stop bullish postings. In which case they are simply liars. Either way there is precisely zero reason to take these people seriously, either about this stock or any other stock they might opine upon.

So therefore, ECU.to bullboard shillers and bullshitters, you collectively win this week's coveted award. Waste your own money on this dog if you like, but what right do you have in trying to palm off a full scale trainwreck of mining company to those that read bullboards and hoodwink them into believing its a company with some bright future ahead. Your analyses are disgraceful and have the sole aim of conning other people and covering your own ego, back pocket, reputation or (most likely) a combination of the three. Your time is now up. Enjoy, dumbasses:

UPDATE: The hatemail has started already, so let's point out here on the blog nice and clearly that I have no position whatsoever in ECU Silver (ECU.to). In fact I've never owned the stock. That's also true for family and (as far as my knowledge goes) any friends. That clear enough for you?

Three things

must....have....child....in...photo

The recession does what treehuggers could only dream about. Doe Run Peru at La Oroya is closed for business. The 10th most polluted place in the world (so they say) is currently a smoke-free zone.

Your humble correspondent has learned that poster's paradise Agoracom is abetting the propagation of completely false rumours about IKN being accused of libel. Interesting stuff, even taking into account that I don't care a jot about the permabull-or-banned policy that the site uses. I believe an immediate aclaration/retraction is in order, Agoracom.

Chile's economeisters continue their lessons to regional peers about responsibility.and transparency. Here's DJNW: SANTIAGO (Dow Jones)--The Chilean Central Bank will likely downwardly revise its 2%-3% gross domestic product growth outlook for this year in light of expectations that the global economy will contract in 2009, bank President Jose DeGregorio said Friday.

According to the central banker, the growth outlook, released in January, was based on expectations that Chile's main trade partners, namely the U.S. and the European Union, would grow this year. He added that recent forecasts show the situation has changed dramatically.

"This isn't a minor change and it will certainly affect our growth yada yada continues here

Message to the Aurelian Agoracom bullboard

We must be humble. We are so easily baffled by appearances
And do not realise that these stones are at one with the stars.
It makes no difference to them whether they are high or low,
Mountain peak or ocean floor, palace, or pigsty.

There are plenty of ruined buildings in the world but no ruined stones

Hugh MacDiarmid, 'On a Raised Beach'


It's over. You need to come to terms with that. If it were 65% or 70%, you'd have a chance in putting up some rearguard action fight. But Kinross has already bagged 80.8% of the total float (As a sidebar, yep it's 80.8%. That's also the way it is. Also, be clear that Kinross will be snagging remnants on the open market). It's now an easy technique for Kinross to reach 90%, and I read just one post on your board that mentioned the technique (I apologize but I can't remember who the poster was or what page it was on or what the title was, either). All Kinross needs to do is use the time-trusted method of dilution. It goes a bit like this, with simplified mathematics:

Company X has 150m shares
Company Y takes over by bagging 80% of those shares (120m shares)
Company X then dilutes 200m shares to raise capex capital, all of which go to company X or friends

Company X now has 320m of 350m shares (over 90% of total float). Compulsory purchase then enacted. Game, set, match. It may not be very pretty, but who said capitalism was?

So from here, I think you have three options:

1) Tender your shares to Kinross. Yes, it means you admit defeat somewhere inside. However it must be said that losing in the stock market is a healthy activity as long as the investor can learn from the experience and apply it to future trades.

2) Hold out. To be honest I see no harm in this, but be clear that holding ARU is for all intents and purposes holding Kinross. Aurelian will now trade in total lockstep with Kinross unless;

a) The Mining Law turns out to be unfavourable to business, in which case both stocks will drop but ARU will drop harder than Kinross (for the record, I think this scenario is very unlikely).

b) Any legal action becomes fruitful to Aurelian shareholders, in which case Aurelian stock will go up compared to Kinross. This brings me to point three.

3) Begin the class action suit you have talked about. I do not know at this point where you stand with this. If you 'go for it' you need to be clear that you are up against a whole ingrained system that may or may not be injust (and in no particular order upset the cozy game played by Canadian companies, brokerages, analysts and the OSC) and will therefore be a tough battle. I'd consider two paths and their consequences right now.

• a) You go for it, start a class action. It either goes to court or it doesn't. If it goes to court you may or may not win. I am not even trying to guess the outcome right now as I have no idea what arguments would be used to prove breach of fiduciary duty. If it doesn't get to court it means you settle at some point with Kinross. This would certainly be an ostensibly better deal than the one on offer, but I'd ballpark guess you'd have to pay maybe a third of the winnings (or maybe even the total payout, which would be worse) to your legal team.

• b) You don't go for it and decide not to prosecute a class action. Fair choice too, but it means admitting defeat. See point 1) above.

I've read you guys regularly over these months, and FWIW I think that you're a bunch of excellent people overall. I think it would be a pity, a true pity, to see you descend into the kind of attitudes demonstrated in the radical goldbug and silverbug world where people claim to have absolute 100% proof of illegal conspiracies, manipulations and suchlike but prefer to hold a grudge against the world for literally years than either do something about it or admit they're wrong. The reason I mention this now is that as I read through the board last night, the word "denial" was uppermost in my mind. Shit, I have my moments of denial too; no-one is innocent here, but that doesn't mean to say I can't recognize the genuine article, either. Denial is a valid part of the process, as long as you don't get stuck on it. For denial to be healthy, it needs to be temporary.

I hate this ARU/KGC deal, but i also live in the real world. The most important thing here is to come away from this sorry episode as better investors. If you hold on to the present situation, shake your fist at the world and deny that it's over, the chances of actually learning from this are lowered. Hell, I've learned valuable lessons from all this mess myself. The main one for me, personally, was the absolute reinforcement of the importance of a good management team. As a e-mail friend wrote to me "CTQ would never, never, never have accepted this deal." I'm not putting CTQ mgmt on a pedestal via that comment, I'm just showing that an experienced (and already wealthy) CEO would have been a better person to have at the helm at ARU than greenhorn who has to sell stock to buy a house.

However, if you do learn from all this and you do become a better, more astute, more cynical and an altogether wiser investor, profit missed or money lost this time will be money well spent in the long-term. Basically you'll be better at this game than before. Every cloud etc etc, which sounds cheesy perhaps, but it's also true.

If you didn't enjoy the contents of this post I wouldn't be surprised, but somebody has to tell you. Feel free to kill the messenger if you like. I'll leave you with another block of Hugh MacDiarmid's poem "On a Raised Beach," simply because I'm feeling all philosophical and insular on this Sunday morning. His complete works are available in the Penguin Classics series, if you're interested in "The Geologist's Poet".

What happens to us
Is irrelevant to the world's geology
But what happens to the world's geology
Is not irrelevant to us.
We must reconcile ourselves to the stones,
Not the stones to us..

Kinross and Aurelian

I have to applaud Tye Burt and Kinross (KGC) for blind-siding the entire field and snagging nearly 75% of Aurelian (ARU.to) shares at a knock-down bargain price (which will rise to over 80% once the employee options go through the system). Once Ecuador's constitutional referendum is over and done with, the country's new mining law will hit the streets, the world will see that Fruta del Norte will have a a stable economic and political base on which it can move forward, and Kinross stock will undoubtedly benefit. Kinross has proved the old adage about fortune favouring the brave. Kudos, Tye Burt.

The losers are the small retail investors, and that includes me. The only silver lining that can be offered right now is to say that the band of brothers and sisters that formed around safeharbour and his agoracom bullboard will certainly become better investors thanks to this experience. I also applaud you all over there. Of course, there are still 20% of Aurelian shares untaken, so the remnant will still trade. No need to be a part of the Russian exposure to keep a hold of FDN (for the moment, at least).

As for Patrick Anderson, I'm going to refrain from saying a lot of the things I could say (there are posts already written, anyway). I'll limit myself to "not a good businessman", and be very clear about the fact that in the future I am very unlikely (and only because 'nevers' don't exist in CapMkts) to invest or to recommend investments in any company with him as a board member.

Aurelian Resources: how some people reacted to the news

This is simply unmissable, so I've made this the first embedded video to grace the site. I have no idea who SOCKOFAN is, but he has my undying gratitude.

As the blurb left by SOCKOFAN says on the youtube page:

"This was Hitler's reaction when he was told of the Kinross Gold offer to buy out Aurelian Resources. My German is rusty, but I translated it as best I could."

Absolutely wonderful stuff, though I should mention there's a little bit (not much) of adult language about half way through, so no viewing if offended easily or in the company of seven year old nieces, please. Caveat over with. Click and enjoy.