The autorité des marchés financiers, Quebec’s securities regulator, has made another big play in its ongoing investigation of beleaguered Triglobal Capital Management Inc.’s affairs

At the request of the AMF, the Cayman Islands Superior Court has named Jean Robillard, a chartered accountant with Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton LLP in Montreal, the provisional liquidator for Focus Management Inc., a Cayman Island-based hedge fund involved in the scandal.

Themistoklis Papadopoulos of Laval, Que., former president of Triglobal, and several Triglobal associates are under investigation for illegally selling the fund — which had not issued a prospectus in Quebec — to investors in the province.

This comes on the heels of the liquidation of two other related funds in the Bahamas, which should tie up some of the case’s loose ends. On Jan. 25, at the request of Quebec’s Ministry of Finance on behalf of the Bureau de décision et de révision en valeurs mobilières (an independent tribunal for securities law in Quebec) and the AMF, the Supreme Court of the Bahamas and the Securities Commission of the Bahamas named Robillard and Maria Ferere, a chartered accountant in Nassau, co-provisional liquidators of Ivest Fund Ltd. and Tricap Futures Fund Ltd., two funds associated with the AMF’s investigation of Triglobal.

As co-provisional liquidators, Robillard and Ferere are charged with doing “all things necessary to preserve the assets and estate” of the companies. In the process, they have the authority to collect documents and investigate the finances of the firms in question.

As with Focus, Ivest was an AMF target because it was one of the funds that Papadopoulos and his associates sold illegally in Quebec. Tricap Futures Fund, on the other hand, was identified by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas as being of the same ilk, says Nathalie Drouin, the AMF’s executive director of enforcement and legal affairs.

Cracks have been showing in the Triglobal façade for some time. The Montreal-based financial planning firm was hemorrhaging advisors in the fall of 2007. Before the end of November, Quebecers who had invested in Papadopoulos’s offshore schemes started contacting the AMF when Papadopoulos could not return their money, let alone the interest he promised them.

According to the AMF, Papa-dopoulos and his small circle had been selling investments in the Ivest and Focus funds since 1997. Papadopoulos and his associates promoted the funds as debt products that yielded 9%-11%, were risk free and easily redeemable. In those 10 years, individual investors placed between $10,000 and $350,000 in Focus and Ivest. Many collected interest on their investments over the years, but in 2007, Triglobal could not reimburse investors who wanted to collect their principal.

The Ivest and Focus funds amassed millions of dollars, although there is no knowing the actual number until Robillard issues his report following the April 30 deadline. The preliminary investigation exposes a complicated network of parent companies, numbered companies in Canada and Quebec, in which there is little money to be found, in addition to Ivest in the Bahamas and Focus in the Cayman Islands.

Papadopoulos and Mario Bright of Kirkland, Que., are at the heart of it. They are the co-owners of 3769682 Canada Inc., which was the sole shareholder of Triglobal. They are also the owners of PNB Management Inc., which made a $30,000 payout to a Focus investor, ostensibly paying interest on his $350,000 stake in Focus. Anna Papathanasiou, Bright’s wife, is the president of PNB and the sole owner of Société de gestion de fortune Triglobal Inc., whose assets Robillard administers separately from Triglobal’s.

Based on the AMF’s preliminary conclusion — that Papadopoulos and Franco Mignacca, then Triglobal’s secretary treasurer, were using the firm to execute illegal investments — the BDRVM placed Triglobal and the companies under its umbrella under the provisional administration of Robillard on Dec. 20, 2007. The cease-trade order for Triglobal was lifted at the end of the year. Promutuel Capital Trust Co. Inc. has since bought Triglobal’s advisor roster and assets under management. Apparently, the sale of Ivest and Focus funds were isolated to Papadopoulos’s circle; most of Triglobal’s 196 advisors ran sound practices.

The cease-trade order still stands, however, for Papadopoulos, Bright, Papathanasiou and Mignacca. Assets remain frozen for the firms in question, including PNB, Société de gestion de fortune Triglobal, as well as the numbered companies. IE

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