samkorn's blog

Re: "Quebec's Financial Watchdog Did It's Job, and Did It Quickly"; Montreal Gazette,(A-17), Oct.5,2009.


The AMF, or the Autorite des Marches Financiers, is the Quebec government's regulatory and financial watchdog. For all intensive purposes, AMF might as well stand for "All Money Foregone".

Jean St-Gelais, president and CEO of the Autorite des marches financiers, argues that the AMF diligently did it's job of protecting investors who lost money in Vincent Lacroix's Norbourg Financial Group, and shrugs off any suggestion of incompetence and/or responsibility for the Norbourg affair.

Norbourg victims would probably beg to differ, despite St-Gelais' claims to the contrary, finding it hard to believe that the AMF couldn't have done much more on their behalf any time sooner.

Is Mr. St-Gelais willing to make the same claim of "mea non culpa" in the case of the Norshields, Triglobal, Mount Real, and/or Earl Jones fiascos, where thousands of other investors lost their life savings?

Whatever is happening vis a vis Norshields, Triglobal, and Mount Real anyway, and why has the AMF never pressed for criminal investigations into these scandals? When contacted, neither the Montreal Police, Quebec Provincial Police nor the RCMP were even aware of having files in these cases.

The fact that all these scandals occurred right under the watchful eye of the AMF does not help bolster Quebec investors' confidence in the financial market, and portrays the AMF as a neutered watchdog with much bark but little bite.