opes bosses tied to risky holdings

http://business.smh.com.au/opes-bosses-tied-to-risky-holdings/20080403-23i7.html


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AS THE ousted Opes Prime chief executive Laurie Emini prepared to appear in the Federal Court in Melbourne this morning in a case brought by the corporate regulator, links have emerged between him, fellow Opes directors and large share and option holdings in more than a dozen speculative mining and biotechnology companies.

Mr Emini and the Opes directors Alun Stevens, Anthony Blumberg and Julian Smith are registered as directors of an unlisted company, Green Frog Nominees, whose ultimate holding company is Opes.

Research by the Herald has revealed Green Frog was named in top 20 share and option-holder lists or as having taken part in capital raisings in at least 14 companies since February last year. All would be deemed highly speculative investments. Several of the companies trade for less than 10c a share, and all have share prices of less than $1.

Many of the companies involved have been subject to high-volume trading in the week since Opes collapsed. As of June 27 last year Green Frog was listed as the largest holder of Admiralty Resources shares, with its 196 million shares comprising a 22 per cent stake in the company.

ANZ Nominees was the second-largest holder at the time, with 119 million shares. Combined, they controlled 315 million shares. By August ANZ Nominees held 318 million shares and Green Frog had exited the Admiralty top 20.

Since last Friday more than 140 million Admiralty shares have changed hands.

Citadel Resource Group counted ANZ Nominees and Opes Prime among its top 20 holders as of December 4, while Green Frog held 9.1 per cent of its unlisted options and 24.64 per cent of its partly paid shares. A line of 63 million Citadel shares was traded yesterday, and its chief executive, Ines Scotland, said the stake had been pledged to Opes and covered about 20 shareholders.

Green Frog is the largest shareholder of Jameson Resources, which has lost 69 per cent of its value in the past five days.

Green Frog's other investments included Nkwe Platinum and BioProspect, which share a director in the Perth lawyer Peter Landau. He is also on the board of Range Resources. Range, which lists ANZ Nominees among its top 20 shareholders, said less than 1 per cent of its stock was affected by the Opes collapse.

The Melbourne daytrader and large Opes client Leo Khouri was reportedly a Range shareholder.

One of his business associates told The Age Mr Khouri was planning to return to Lebanon soon, despite banding together investors with $300 million of seized stock to file a lawsuit in hopes of regaining control of their holdings.

The fallout from the Opes collapse also appears to have ensnared the Sydney broker Findlay & Co. Findlay's nominee company, Captain Starlight, holds options in Nkwe, which is registered in Bermuda. Findlay and Captain Starlight - along with Green Frog - also own shares in CircleCOM.

Findlay is an adviser to Range and to Fairstar Resources. Fairstar is attempting to buy its rival Golden West Resources, but the latter said 14.75 million of its shares owned by Fairstar were held by ANZ Nominees and linked to Opes.

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