What the ASC Can and Cannot Do

In the article “CEF/DIL: ASC vs LCC et al” I made a reference to the ASC “throwing the book” at the respondents if they interpreted the respondents appeal to the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta as an attempted end-run of the hearing date the ASC had set back in Aug 2018 .

“Carl Vehse” asked – “What can the ASC do?”

I found the answer on the ASC’s website here under “What the ASC can and cannot do”:

The ASC is authorized to:

• impose fines known as “administrative penalties” of up to $1 million per contravention of the Securities Act(Alberta), freeze assets and ban from the market those who breach the Act;
• stopcompanies or individuals from trading securities during an investigation;
• stop the trading in securities of a company if it fails to fulfill its obligations under Alberta securities laws; and
• pursue offenders in the Provincial Court of Alberta as an agent of the Crown, with the power to seek jail terms of up to five years less a day and fines of up to $5 million per offence committed.

The ASC is not authorized to:

• get money back for investors;
• offer investment or legal advice; or
• comment on any aspect of an investigation.

Looking at how the ASC has treated similar cases in the past – if the respondents are convicted I fully expect the ASC to “throw the book” at the respondents and seek the maximum penalties allowable under the law.

That this alleged affinity fraud happened is bad enough – that the respondents are using the promotion of their faith as a excuse defense makes it even worse. For an example see Bill Nye’s paper “FACTORS THAT LED TO A CALL FOR A MAJOR OVERHAUL OF THE LCC STRUCTURE”

Those decisions were made by good, dedicated Christian people, fellow members of the body of Christ and of congregations of the ABC District, all of whom were committed to spreading the Word of God, with no intent whatsoever to have the project fail.

The fact that it wasn’t their money and they had no right to waste it the way they did doesn’t seem to factor anywhere into Mr Nye’s analysis.

See my article “CEF, Restructuring, and an Undeclared Conflict of Interest” for a full analysis of Mr Nye’s paper.  See also my article questioning if LCC is an antominian Synod for a possible explanation where this defense is coming from.