Trading in biotech firm barred
MIKE KING, The Gazette
Published: Wednesday, November 07
Quebec's securities watchdog has barred trading in securities issued by a Montreal biotech company and two of its affiliates over concerns about their business practices.
The quasi-judicial Bureau de décision et de révision en valeurs mobilières handed down the decision Nov. 1 concerning Millenia Hope Inc., Millenia Hope Bio-Pharma and MD Multimédia Inc. at the request of the Autorité des marchés financiers.
The BDRVM ruling also prohibits Pierre Couture and Claude Yvon Provost from acting as securities brokers for those firms because the men aren't registered as such by the AMF.
The AMF told an Oct. 31 bureau hearing that Couture and Provost met with about 25 potential investors at a restaurant Oct. 10 to solicit $300 investments for a patent they said could be sold to multinational companies for between $100 million and $150 million.
At the meeting, which was attended by AMF representatives, there was no approved prospectus presented to investors as is required under the provincial Securities Act for securities offerings.
Hugo Valente, Millenia Hope's CFO and compliance officer, said yesterday he couldn't comment on the BDRVM decision and other company officials could not be reached.
Millenia Hope advertises itself as a biopharmaceutical company focused on comprehensive solutions to the problem of world disease, in particular malaria.
In 2002, it announced a $1.8-million (U.S.) sale of its anti-malaria drug Malarex to west African countries and launched it there commercially three years later.
Millenia Hope's stock trades on the lightly regulated pink sheets market in the U.S.
The shares closed yesterday at 2 cents apiece.