In a landmark settlement, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has fined and permanently banned Bernard Boily for falsifying scientific research used in press releases by Bear Lake Gold Ltd., a mining exploration company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto. When Bear Lake Gold announced that its research had been tampered with, it suffered a one-day market capitalisation loss of $42 million. The Boily case is the first to come before the OSC that pertains to the conduct of a qualified person, a position defined as a gatekeeper of technical information under National Instrument 43-101 – Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (PDF) (NI 43-101). In the agreed facts, Boily admitted that during December 2007 to July 2009 he: Altered certain scientific data that was received by Bear Lake and transferred these results into the company’s assay database. (An assay is an investigative procedure for qualitatively assessing or quantitatively measuring the presence, amount,
↧