The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has handed down its latest penalties against Abel Da Silva, permanently banning him from the market, and levying $350,000 in monetary penalties against him, for violating a cease trade order and lying to the commission.
An OSC panel has released its decision on sanctions against Da Silva, after finding in a decision handed down on June 22, 2011 that Da Silva misled OSC staff and breached a cease trade order.
Ontario man jailed for unregistered trading
On Tuesday, the panel ordered that he should be permanently banned from trading, and from acting as a director or officer of an issuer, registrant, investment fund manager or promoter. It also ordered that he pay an administrative penalty of $250,000, disgorge the $45,280 he obtained as a result of his illicit trading, and $52,470.25 in costs.
Da Silva has already been sentenced to jail time for the same violation. In June 2010, Da Silva pled guilty in the Ontario Court of Justice to a charge of contravening Ontario securities laws by trading in securities of Colby Cooper Inc. at a time when he was prohibited from trading by an OSC cease trade order. As a result, he was sentenced to 75 days in jail, and given two years probation.
Earlier this year, Justice Sheila Ray of the Ontario Court of Justice sentenced Da Silva to 18 months in jail for other violations of OSC cease trade orders — a sentence that was to run concurrently with the 27 months in jail he was given in November 2011, for fraud, trading in securities without registration and trading in securities without a prospectus.
The latest sanctions handed down by the OSC relate to a decision from May 2006, when Da Silva was ordered to cease trading for seven years and to pay $7,500 costs of the commission for trading without registration and distributing securities without an exemption.
In the decision issued today, the panel said, “Breaches of commission orders show a disregard for the rule of law as well as for the commission and its processes, undermine public confidence in the capital markets, and amount to conduct contrary to the public interest.”
In addition to violating the cease trade order, the panel also found that Da Silva misled the commission about his employment history and financial situation back in 2006. “Evasion, obfuscation, and untruth in responding to staff inquiries serves to hinder staff’s performance of their responsibilities to monitor and enforce compliance with Ontario securities law; such conduct is an obstacle to effective regulation of the capital markets,” the panel added.
In handing down a permanent ban, the panel said, “His conduct demonstrates that he cannot be trusted to participate in the capital markets in even a limited capacity.” It also found that he should pay an administrative penalty “given the seriousness of his misconduct and his repeated breaches of the Act.”