Page 60 FONT S GOTHAM UL TRA GOTHAM BOO K title client date designer s C OMP ASS CREA TIVE STUDIO IN C 2013228 south service rd burlington on L7N 3H 8 ww w compasscreativeca THOR GLOBA L LOGO Thor Global December 2010 Joel Re ynolds C MYK COLOUR S W er e not jus t selling a piec e of machinery W er e a pas siona t e partner with o v er 40 y ears in v es t ed in r esear ch tha t solv es the is sues y ou f ac e e v ery da y W er e cr ea ting opportunity and y ou need t o seiz e it T oge T her we can mo ve moun T ains thor global ca Bulk Ma terial Handling is H ard w ork m o ving v a s T qu an T i T ies of na T ural resources and ra w ma T erials is vi T al T o T he ec onomy y e T T hese d a y s i T seems like a T hankles s job By Gregory Reynolds A sad chapter in Canadian mining his tory has fnally been closed The lengthy battle by BreX investors to recover billions in Canada s lar g est mining fraud appears to be over as under a settlem ent approved by the Alberta Court of Queen s Bench the remaining classaction suits were dis missed against the main defendants in the case the estate of BreX s late founder and CEO David W alsh and chief geologist John Felderhof The Calgary court made the ruling at the request of bankruptcy trustee De loitte and T ouche which said there was no realisti c prospect of realizing any signifcant recovery through the litigation and that the costs of pro ceeding were prohibitive As a result all parties agreed to a pay ment of 52million to be divided among investors who apply for a set tlement They had sought 5 billion but in the end the 40000 sharehold ers who went to court receiv ed 130 each Legal and accounting costs chewed up a portion of the only funds recov ered Those who sued over Br eX fraud r eceive 130 each in settlement Courts in Ontario and the T exas had earlier agreed to the settlement The money was divided between plaintif fs in the Ontario and T exas class actions on the basis of 67 per cent to the On tario class and 33 per cent to the T ex as class Deloitte said in an emailed statement BreX became known as the lar gest mining fraud in Canadian history back in 1997 when its claim of a major gold discovery in Indonesia proved to be a fake Investors around the world lost an estimated 3billion in the resulting collapse of the company s share price which had gone from pennies to over 250 Lawyer Clint Docken of Docken Klym a law frm that represented a number of individual investors and originally led the case in Alberta wasn t happy with the outcome but agreed little more could be done Unfortunately things have lan guished and languished to the ex tent that recovery possibilitie s aren t promising said Docken It s a sad day W e have ar guably Canada s lar gest ever fraud and no accountability There s no criminal ac countability there s no regulatory ac countability and now there doesn t appear to be any civil accountability Docken said there remain a few plain tif fs in Ontario who were not part of the settleme nt but said he didn t know the status of those cases Deloitte and T ouche was appointed as trustee in bankruptcy of BreX Min erals Ltd by the Alberta court in No vember 1997 after the company was hit with several multibilliondollar shareholder lawsuits The trustee sought to recover insider trading profts from several of Bre X s former executives in Ontario and an action was pursued in Alberta against BreX s sister company Bre sea Resources Inc Cases was also pursued in the Cay man Islands the Bahamas and Philip pines and ef forts were undertaken to recoup money that had been depos ited in a Channel Island T rust But in the end the action from 1998 through to 201 1 recovered only 5million from the Channel Island T rust and a further 2million in the settlement of the action agai nst Bre sea W ith court approval the funds were added to the cash on hand and used to fund ongoing recovery ef forts How ever Deloitte said that by 201 1 it had become apparent no further recover ies were possible Part of the reason was that funds fro zen under various injunctions had been spent under the terms of those orders that permitted payment of the defendants living expenses and legal costs Deloitte said at the time As well one of the principa l tar gets of the litigation BreX s geologist John Felderhof was acquitted after a lengthy Ontario Securities Commis sion trial The BreX Minerals building in Calgary as it was in 1997 Jef f McIntoshCP fle photo