The Ontario Securities Commission has approved a settlement agreement reached between Enforcement staff and Mark Edward Valentine.

The Commission has ordered that Valentine be permanently prohibiting Valentine from being registered under Ontario securities law, and permanently prohibiting him from acting as an officer or director of any issuer in Ontario.

He is also prohibited from trading in securities for a period of 15 years, with the exception that after five years he may engage in specified trading.

As part of the settlement agreement, Valentine consented to a similar order being made by any other Canadian securities commissions, and promised to never re-apply for membership in the IDA.

In a prepared statement, OSC director of enforcement Michael Watson said, “The national scope of this settlement agreement is unprecedented. Mr. Valentine will never hold a licensed position in the Canadian capital markets again. The Commission has sent a message that people in positions of authority in the securities industry must be held to high standards of honesty and fair dealing.”

Finally, Valentine was ordered to pay $100,000 towards the costs of Staff’s investigation of this matter.

The penalties were imposed by the OSC as a result of actions that Valentine undertook while he was chairman, director and the largest shareholder of Thomson Kernaghan & Co. Ltd, an investment dealer based in Toronto. At the same time, Valentine was also the directing mind of four private investment funds housed within TK’s offices. The investors in these funds were primarily individual retail clients of TK.

In the settlement agreement, Valentine agreed that he had failed to act in the best interests of the investors in two transactions, one involving the shares of Chell Group Corporation, and the other involving a debenture issued by IKAR Minerals.

Valentine also admitted that he certified a document filed with the IDA that misrepresented TK’s financial status and solvency.

Finally, Valentine acknowledged that in March of 2004, he pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.