This morning, Blasting News presented an argument that Canadian Member of Parliament Charlie Angus is no Bernie Sanders. The piece contrasted the level of financial disclosure required on the part of Canadian members of Parliament, compared with U.S. members of Congress. It turns out that President Donald Trump, who is notorious for releasing as little information as possible, may provide a higher level of financial disclosure than Canadian MPs like Charlie Angus.
Charlie Angus maintains an office in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, located within walking distance of the Kirkland Lake Town Hall and Council Chambers, where Councilor Todd Morgan regularly sits in meetings.
In 2011, besides serving as Town councilor, Morgan served as chief executive officer of then-named Armistice Resources. While CEO, Todd Morgan issued promises of bringing 100 jobs to the Kirkland Lake area, and of bringing a mine located in Larder Lake, about a half-hour drive east of Kirkland Lake, along Highway 66, into production.
What is going on with penny stocks in Kirkland Lake?
Then, in the fall of 2013, Morgan suddenly resigned, the company changed its name to Kerr Mines Inc. (TSE: KER), and the stock was pummeled. Over the past ten years, Kerr's stock, and its predecessor Armistice's, is down over 98 percent. Blasting News has speculated about reasons that Todd Morgan, and those connected to him, might be interested in selling fraudulent stock; among them, personally profiting from the shares in seeming pump-and-dump schemes, but perhaps also as a sort of municipal economic plan to promote growth, or at least present the appearance of it.
The Charlie Angus connection to the Todd Morgan-Armistice-Kerr debacle is this: Angus almost certainly knows Morgan personally. In the years leading up to whatever it is that Morgan seemed to pull in Larder Lake, Charlie Angus was vocal in his support of flow-through shares, boasting of his consistent leadership on the subject.
Is it a coincidence that Morgan, and Armistice, took advantage of this program, seemingly using it to entice investors to purchase blocks of thinly-traded speculative stock in private placements, with the intent to later flip it in small lots on naive retail investors? Stock that is now down 98 percent.
Are flow-through shares a tool used by con artists?
An investor with $100,000 might be given the chance to buy a private placement of stock currently quoted at $.50 for $0.40, with the condition that it be held for several months. Further, many of these deals qualify under flow-through share legislation so that a tax benefit is also provided. Continuing with the example where stock traded at $0.50 is sold to the buyer of a private placement for $0.40, a further $0.20 might be saved in taxes, through the flow-through share program. This brings the effective purchase price of a $0.50 stock to $0.20, which almost sounds too good to be true, until it is learned that shares like Armistice, and Kerr, finance offerings with flow-through shares, and their stock is down 98 percent.
Imagine getting $0.50 shares for $0.20, and then watching the price fall to $0.01. That is the reality behind Charlie Angus, Todd Morgan, and Armistice Resources.
As an insider who reports his stock holdings with the Canadian System for Electronic Disclosure by Insiders (SEDI) It is public knowledge that Todd Morgan owns a good deal of Kerr stock. However, the Canadian public has no idea if Charlie Angus has traded in the shares of Kerr, or any of the many other penny stocks with operations in the Kirkland Lake area. That Canadian members of Parliament like Angus aren't required to regularly regularly disclose not only the investments they own, but also their transaction record, given that they are instrumental in drafting legislation that has a significant impact on publicly traded investments, is an absurd anachronism.
