Echelon, BLG team up to create “capital pool company”

The once notorious Vancouver Stock Exchange (VSE), long considered a haven for scoundrels, is back as an apparent investment scam purporting to list China-based companies.

The B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC) issued an investor alert on Wednesday about a firm with the name Vancouver Stock Exchange Corp. (VSEC) that “appears to have been issuing stock exchange listings to companies in China and B.C.”

According to the regulatory alert, the firm — which claims to be based in Kitimat, B.C., and to operate an outpost in Shenzhen, China — is holding itself out as being a reincarnation of the old VSE.

In its heyday the VSE became known as the “scam capital of the world” amid the highly speculative stock promotions that populated its listings. That label disappeared when the exchange was absorbed in a merger with the Alberta Stock Exchange (ASE) in 1999 to create the Canadian Venture Exchange Inc. (CDNX) as part of a broad restructuring of the securities trading landscape in Canada.

Now, the BCSC reports that VSEC is claiming that the old VSE was reinstated as an independent exchange in June 2016. In fact, “VSEC is not authorized to operate as an exchange in B.C.,” the BCSC alert notes.

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