Bull shopping Indochina

Bull shopping Indochina

During this period (1996-97) Friedland was busy turning his other holding company, Indochina Goldfields (IGL) into another ramrod for private speculation in the region. IGL's preliminary prospectus promised the company would "...identify and establish an early presence in those countries...that combine the potential for significant ore deposits with limited exploration and development by foreign mining companies, due to past economic or political constraints" [quoted in Canadian Financial Post 17/5/96]. By mid-1996 Friedland directly owned 38.2% of IGL, after its first public flotation and registration on the Toronto Stock Exchange [Financial Post, Toronto, 14/6/96, Forbes Today 10/2/96]. He had also attracted investment from two industry heavyweights, the Canadian mining company, Teck, and Japan's huge Sumitomo, the world's largest copper trader [The Nation, 13/12/9]. IGL's 1996 public offering was underwritten by a raft of leading Canadian banks and brokerage firms, including First Marathon Securities.

Friedland's genius for drawing ostensibly respectable financiers into his manoeuvres was aptly demonstrated when, in the two years before the offering, five employees of First Marathon were invited to participate in a series of private placements, enabling them to secure IGL stock at heavily discounted prices. Allegedly one broker, Robert Hartkinson, invested over one and a quarter million dollars in the deal at up to C$5 a share. When IGL went public, with shares issued at three times this value (C$15 per share), Hartkinson and his colleagues made millions. This wasn't all: Friedland himself loaned C$3 million to IGL in February 1994 for "general corporate purposes". Later that year he was repaid with 16.78 million shares in the company, valued then at only C25 cents a share. In1996 their quoted value shot up to nearly C$186 million - a paper profit for Friedland of more than one hundred and eighty million dollars.

Still the scam didn't stop. That year, IGL secured its 50% stake in the Monywa copper project in Burma [MJ 31/5/96]. Ostensibly Friedland purchased the half share in this mine - but he also profited from the deal. Ivanhoe Capital's expenditure of C$4.36 million on the property was paid for with 5 million IGL shares, the worth of which later climbed more than tenfold. Indochina Goldfields' interests also include a 17% stake in Fiji's Emperor Gold Mines, whose disregard of its workforce and Indigenous rights is legendary [see 'Atu Emberson Bain, Labour and Gold in Fiji, Cambridge University Press, 1994]. Emperor had been targeted by Friedland in a classic manoeuvre to "turn around" the ailing enterprise. He bought nearly 14% of the company's stock from Emperor's chair, George Drysdale, at the eminently reasonable tag of A$1.85 apiece. Another 10% of the equity ended up in the hands of leading Malaysian entrepreneur, Tan Sri Azmi Wan Hamzah, who joined the board, along with Friedland nominees Edward Flood and Gordon Toll, (that outrageous apologist for Summitville), who became respectively the president and chief operating officer of IGL [MJ 22-29/12/95].