If the major shareholders intention was to rip IPO investors off...

If the major shareholders intention was to rip IPO investors off they could simply have vended some of their pile of shares in the company to investors in the IPO offering rather than issue new shares and pocketed the $. The job could have been done in one foul swoop.

Private equity groups do that on a regular basis.

That wasn't the case here. Sure they got 350m shares, for their initial investment and retained earnings, at 7.4c a share when they vended, their long established and profitable company into XPD. Was its value at that point in time 20c. the IPO investors thought so.

The fact they didn't sell shares into the IPO gives them creditability, the fact that they have been buying shares since gives them more creditability.

The fact that they reinvested their dividends is proof that they want to leave their money in and build the company.
Given the knowledge and past proof that they don't want to take dividends themselves its easy to understand that they would want to avoid the enormous tax burden that they are subjected to in the Dividend-DRIP roundabout to reinvestment.

As the original pre float share holders and their distributors own 90% of the company and are probably of one mind in wanting to build their business its not difficult to understand that they would balk at paying a lot of unnecessary tax just to make a dividend available to 10% of the shareholders. Doing that doesn't make any sense really.

Not paying dividends isn't the end of the world. Warren Buffet never has. No one thinks he's conspiring to keep the money so he can pay him and his family and friends above the odds for stuff that might not even be happening.

hold , fold or be bold