Spencer Pharmaceutical (SPPH)

[scion]

20.51 to 20.77 First and as far as I am concerned I was not involved in a pump-and-dump scheme and I was not at the origin of the purported Buy-out Offer. All the citations of the press-releases are true. But all the paragraphs added in the complaint are "tendentious and misleading" about my role in this Offer. As far as I am concerned, we received an offer that we took seriously since it was supported by a staff member of the Canadian Senate (Mr Rami Ailabouni) that assured us of the seriousness of the people behind the offer. Also, and contrary to what the SEC is claiming, the company was conducting and in the advancing high-value research and development projects and the scientific content is real and of world class level with an inestimable value. If there was a scheme, I was not aware of such a scheme since I acted purely with the help of people surrounding me and of any available help that was at my possibility. I also took steps to make sure that everything was appropriate on my response to the Offer and asked many times Mr Emas and Mr Morrice to help me and advising me on the process of the Offer. Also, starting in January I asked a personal friend lawyer, Mr Claude Boulanger, to help me on the assessment of the Offer and the proper response during the course of a due­ diligence. Retrospectively now it is clear for me that I was a victim of a scheme but at the time I was not aware of that and firmly deny any wrong doing from my part. As far as the offer of the Al-Dorra and later Hail-First-Pharma group are concerned I will comment later during my defense the step-to-step initiatives that I took to ensure that we were properly evaluating this business-opportunity offered to the Company. It is also important to mention that starting in January 2011 few press­ releases were issued by Hail-First-Pharma. I learned the content of these press­ releases when I was informed by my colleagues that saw them in the wire services. I was never involved in any way in these press-releases related to Hail-First­ Pharma.


OCR extract
Doc 7 PDF file
http://www.scribd.com/doc/136035469/SEC-v-Spencer-Pharmaceutical-Inc-Et-Al-Doc-7-19-Mar-13