Earlier this year, there were a couple of discussion threads started in the Canadian Business forums about Concrete Equities. The threads were full of useful information, and I posted in them several times. Curiously, right around the time that Vincenzo De Palma had his lawyers threaten to sue me for libel, the threads in the Canadian Business Forums were deleted. I don’t know why they were deleted – in fact a post I made there asking what happened was deleted – but it’s not hard to see the reasons why. Someone contacted me earlier this week about this topic; they’ve created a blog with all of the posts originally made to those Canadian Business Forum discussion threads about Concrete Equities. It makes for some interesting reading!

Look what I found on the Alberta Securities Commission Web site:

“Calgary-based Teluric International Investments Ltd., the Teluric Diversified Fund, David Humeniuk and Elizabeth Humeniuk have provided an Undertaking to the Executive Director of the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC).  The Undertaking comes after ASC staff identified that the parties failed to disclose in a Teluric Diversified Fund offering memorandum information required by Alberta securities laws.  No sales occurred pursuant to the offering memorandum, nor are any sales contemplated in the future. The Undertaking states that Teluric International Investments, the Teluric Diversified Fund, David and Elizabeth Humeniuk agree they will cease all trading and refrain from any further trading of Teluric Diversified Fund securities until such time as the Executive Director releases them from this Undertaking.”

Who’s Dave Humeniuk you might be wondering? Why, he was a Director at Concrete Equities of course! Some truly interesting things have been said about the Santa Clara Mexico investment in court documents involving Dave Humeniuk and Vincenzo De Palma (sort of a “he said, he said” thing), and I’m planning on publishing those in the next week or two. Court documents aren’t libel because they fall under Absolute Privilege. Any lawyer reading this knows that. The document relating to the above ASC action can be found here – in short, it says that Dave Humeniuk needed to “Disclose any penalty or sanction (including the reason for it and whether it is currently in effect) that has been in effect during the last 10 years against (i) a director, executive officer or control person of the issuer, or (ii) an issuer of which a person referred to in (i) above was a director, executive officer or control person at the time.”

It seems he didn’t do that, and that’s against the rules.

Above is a screen shot of the PDF file I was sent via email today by one Becky Mansour, Jeff Bone’s legal assistant. In order to “govern myself accordingly”, I’ve contacted the firm of BURNET, DUCKWORTH & PALMER LLP to advise me on this matter. I find it puzzling that Mr. De Palma’s lawyers think that simply writing the name of their client on this site is libellous. In my understanding of libel law, writing someone’s name online cannot be considered libel. At any rate, I have the weekend to consider my options and the advice of counsel.

Fact: Vincenzo De Palma, President of Concrete Equities, has accused me of libel via his lawyer, Jeffrey Bone.

Fact: I received the following letter today, stating this:

Fact: I phoned Jefferey Bone less than an hour ago to inquire which of my “remarks” they consider to be “defaming” and “disparaging”, but I was unable to get in touch with him. I’m waiting to hear back from him and cannot proceed until I get clarification.

Fact: I’d much rather be editing videos of my son Logan than writing this blog post.

Fact: All information contained in this post is a fact.

UPDATE: I’ve had a short discussion with Jefferey Bone and he’s going to get specifics from his client and get back to me.