Trident should have thought better of breaching a contract with Seamus Lagan. This man previously went up against some very dubious individuals and people in high places including a former Irish Taoiseach for defrauding him and other investors. Lagan was awarded $1.8M out of $2M in damages by a Judge in NY in that case and was been named in an extensive article in the Wall Street Journal on that matter.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/alberts-former-firm-must-repay-2m-to-defrauded-investors-26284299.html
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB107914386252854431
By
Bill AlpertBill Alpert
Updated March 15, 2004 12:01 a.m. ET
ALBERT REYNOLDS, THE IRISH prime minister who brought peace to his troubled island in the 1990s, wants to clean up the world. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995, he now is chairman of a Nasdaq firm called Life Energy & Technology Holdings that has announced well over $10 billion in deals for its Biosphere incinerators. The company says that its $7 million burners make "clean, green electricity" from municipal trash, medical waste, tires, sewage, shale oil and natural gas. "Perhaps the most important legacy we can leave to our children," Reynolds has said on the firm's Website, "is to have it said that we left this world in a better condition than we found it."
Yet it's hard to find many Life Energy & Technology Holdings incinerators cleaning the world. The company says one is working in Lebanon. But in seeking a permit in Louisiana last year, it submitted evidence of only two environmental tests: one for the Lebanese burner and the other for an incinerator that a Colorado firm claims is its own. More worrisome for U.S. investors are the histories of some associates of Reynolds' clean-energy outfit, such as John J. O'Carroll.
A subject of a 1990s British investigation dubbed Operation Gandalf, O'Carroll moved cash around at the behest of a Colombian drug-cartel money launderer, a 1996 federal court filing by U.S. prosecutors says. Offshore companies controlled by O'Carroll were used in stock trades arranged by defendants who pleaded guilty in two 1990s fraud cases, according to records in California federal court and New York state court actions.
Life Energy & Technology is a tiny presence on the Nasdaq Bulletin Board, where it trades under the symbol LETH. Even after its shares more than doubled in recent weeks to 2.95, the company's stock-market capitalization barely exceeded $85 million. In its last reported 18 months, it had no sales. Yet this obscure firm has made contact with political figures on four continents. Along with Albert Reynolds, its political allies have included the late U.S. Sen. Vance Hartke of Indiana.
Former associates, company documents, and O'Carroll's e-mails (from an address with the number "666") point to his involvement in business ventures whose public faces were Reynolds and a leprechaun of a fellow named Christopher A. McCormack, LETH's chief executive. O'Carroll's active involvement in the Nasdaq firm isn't mentioned in its federal securities disclosures to its public investors in the U.S.
The fraud bureau of Ireland's national police is investigating the handling of investors' funds in an earlier McCormack-O'Carroll-Reynolds incinerator venture, but neither Reynolds nor McCormack nor O'Carroll has been charged with wrongdoing in that instance -- or any other. The company and O'Carroll have warned Barron's against publishing this article, which reports matters that U.S. investors and regulators might well want to consider in sizing up LETH. On March 1, O'Carroll went to the extraordinary length of asking an Irish court to enjoin us from publishing this story, saying that it would hurt his standing with his business associate Albert Reynolds. The court has yet to rule.
By several accounts, the 71-year-old Reynolds has served mainly as a public face, showing up at business meals to promote incinerator ventures in which O'Carroll and McCormack were involved. The former Irish prime minister's stature has helped LETH's promoters meet leading political figures from Russia, Algeria, and Zambia. "You mentioned Albert Reynolds' name ...and every door opened," recalls another founder of LETH, Bradley T. Ray. A U.S. penny-stock financier who pleaded guilty in 1991 to making a false statement to a federal grand jury in Seattle, Ray is in litigation with LETH over his efforts to sell 750,000 shares of its stock, to which the company says he's not entitled. Ray says that McCormack and Reynolds introduced him to many Irish politicians: "All of the people who make Ireland go."
"It was exhilarating," says Ray, "Like going into a candy store."
AFTER MAKING HIS FORTUNE as a dance-hall promoter and manufacturer of dog food, Albert Reynolds won election to Ireland's parliament in 1977. He served as prime minister for about two years, starting in 1992, and helped broker Britain's Good Friday peace initiative with Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army. For his contribution, Reynolds was one of 115 nominees for the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize.
Irish law lets members of parliament stay active in business if they disclose their activities. Through his retirement from parliament in 2002, Reynolds served as a non-executive director of some publicly traded Irish companies, including Jefferson-Smurfit, the paper maker, and Bula Resources, an oil-exploration outfit. He also teamed up with Chris McCormack, whose McCormack Consultants tried to buy an Irish cotton mill in 1999 with Reynolds' assistance. Former colleagues describe the 41-year old McCormack as an affable, down-to-earth fellow, who told people his family controlled an Irish hauling business with hundreds of trucks. He sports a long list of degrees after his signature.
The cotton-mill deal never went forward, but Reynolds and McCormack soon found another mission. They were introduced to the incineration technology of Nathaniel Energy -- a struggling Colorado penny-stock firm whose founders had installed waste burners around the world. In December 1999, McCormack and Reynolds agreed to present the U.S. company's incinerator to local governments in Europe, through a series of Irish enterprises with names such as Nathaniel Europe, Life Technologies and Life Energy Corp.
Their introduction to the U.S. technology -- according to LETH's written answers to questions from Barron's -- came through John J. O'Carroll, whom Chris McCormack says he met at a London art show.
O'Carroll is a 57-year-old commodities trader, investment banker and investor, who has sometimes used the names "John Carroll" and "Charles Dreyfus." A citizen of both the U.S. and Ireland, his career has taken him to Russia, the Mideast and to Switzerland, where he operated a Geneva-based financial firm. A few years ago, O'Carroll settled down in a gardened manor on a hilltop near Dundalk, Ireland, with a collection of paintings, fine wines and a bodyguard. Walls and closed-circuit cameras surrounded the estate, according to former associates, who say that the soft-spoken O'Carroll boasted of having served in the U.S. military and of working with the CIA. O'Carroll didn't respond to Barron's questions about these accounts.
O'Carroll's name appeared in U.S. and U.K. investigations of some complex financial schemes in the 1990s -- probes that led to several prosecutions and, eventually, the conviction of a British criminal-court judge. Prosecutors have never charged O'Carroll with an offense, and O'Carroll says that no court has ever found that he engaged in improper actions.
In a May 1996 court filing, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York asked a federal judge to authorize British investigators to gather evidence in the U.S. for a probe of O'Carroll's activities on behalf of Stephen A. Saccoccia -- a Cranston, R.I., gold dealer convicted in 1993 of laundering over $135 million for Colombia's Cali drug cartel. Saccoccia is serving 660 years in federal prison. Following Saccoccia's 1991 arrest, the filing said, O'Carroll went to Vienna to help Saccoccia's lawyer retrieve cash for Saccoccia from a bank account. British police say that the name on the account was "Abilene."
As part of an investigation that they eventually dubbed Operation Gandalf, the filing asserted, U.K. authorities discovered that O'Carroll and others were trading millions of dollars' worth of U.S. stocks through companies incorporated in Britain's Channel Islands and then moving the profits back to the U.S. For the most part, the trades relied upon Regulation S of the Securities Act of 1933, which let foreigners buy and sell unregistered U.S. shares. Evidence uncovered in Operation Gandalf also led to the separate -- and unrelated to O'Carroll -- money-laundering prosecution of Bank of New York executives whose clients were connected to the Russian mob.
Several prosecutions that resulted from Operation Gandalf featured Reg S trades by John O'Carroll (who, as noted, was not himself charged). In 1997 and 1998, in a Manhattan state court, executives at the New York brokerage firm Westfield Financial admitted that they'd manipulated U.S. stocks through offshore companies ostensibly controlled by foreigners. In statements that U.K. police say were given to them, the Westfield brokers said that several of these offshore companies were O'Carroll's.
In a San Francisco federal court in 2001, the former executives of California-based Scorpion Technologies pleaded guilty to a conspiracy in which they padded the firm's revenues with cash raised through Reg S sales to other offshore companies controlled by O'Carroll. Court filings by New York prosecutors -- and by plaintiffs in a federal civil class action that involved Scorpion -- discussed O'Carroll offshore companies that were incorporated on the Isle of Man -- a tax haven in the Irish Sea -- then staffed with directors from the even smaller English Channel Isle of Sark, whose inhabitants once were thought to be beyond the reach of British law.
Through his Irish attorney, Maxwell Mooney, O'Carroll denies that any of O'Carroll's clients were "investigated, questioned, indicted or convicted as a part of any Reg-S transaction" done by O'Carroll's Swiss financial firm. Mooney declined to answer specific questions about the Westfield and Scorpion trades, or about any of O'Carroll's other financial firms.
During the Operation Gandalf investigation, U.K. authorities made an alarming discovery. Phony documents -- used to mislead U.S. and British investigators as to who owned Westfield's Reg S stocks -- had been supplied by the London lawyer Andrew R. Warren and his former partner, Stuart Creggy, a London criminal-court magistrate. Abruptly, British police made it their priority to get the corrupt judge off the bench. U.S. law provided the fastest way. So the British cops presented their evidence to the Manhattan district attorney, who successfully prosecuted Creggy for fraud in 2002 (a conviction Creggy is appealing). Andrew Warren pleaded guilty to attempted racketeering charges in a New York state court last June. At Creggy's trial, the British police described their Operation Gandalf investigation of O'Carroll. A prosecution diagram of the Gandalf investigation showed how a "Subject A" moved funds around at the behest of the money launderer Saccoccia. Prosecutors say "Subject A" was John J. O'Carroll.
The prosecutors didn't charge O'Carroll with any offense. In a letter to Barron's, his attorney Mooney says that an official investigation -- jointly funded by O'Carroll and Swiss authorities -- had found O'Carroll innocent of wrongdoing, and determined that he had no dealings with Saccoccia or Saccoccia's associates. According to Mooney, the Swiss report said: "Mr. O'Carroll had never done anything that a normal businessman would not do." O'Carroll and Life Energy declined to provide Barron's with the Swiss report, or to identify the agency or officials who wrote it.
ON DEC. 10, 1999, O'CARROLL arranged a deal between the U.S. incinerator maker Nathaniel Energy and McCormack Consultants. According to the minutes from a later meeting on the transaction, O'Carroll and Chris McCormack "comprised" the management of McCormack Consultants. Plans called for Nathaniel to exchange its Nasdaq-listed stock with an Irish firm whose non-executive chairman would be Albert Reynolds. A board member and 26.66% shareholder would be John O'Carroll.
Another proposed board member of the Irish firm was Steve Norris, a prominent British politician then running for Lord Mayor of London. In early 2000, the U.S. incinerator makers stopped by London to meet O'Carroll and the candidate. McCormack was also coming to the city -- according to travel instructions that O'Carroll faxed to the Americans -- along with some Irish officials. Their purpose, said O'Carroll's fax: "to assist Steve with the London Irish vote." Norris didn't win, and he's repeating his bid for Lord Mayor this year. Norris says he didn't know O'Carroll -- except as an acquaintance of McCormack's. Norris declined to participate in McCormack's venture.
From London, O'Carroll, McCormack and the Americans traveled to Dublin, where on Feb. 7, 2000, they gathered at the majestic Clontarf Castle Hotel to plan their Irish incinerator venture. McCormack Consultants' minutes of the meeting show O'Carroll nominating the officers of the proposed venture, a list that included Reynolds and Norris. The minutes also describe McCormack Consultants as "comprised" of McCormack and O'Carroll. Lawyers for O'Carroll and McCormack deny that O'Carroll was a part of McCormack Consultants.
Nathaniel Energy's chief executive, Stan Abrams, says that O'Carroll and McCormack soon started urging the U.S. firm to send a burner to Ireland in time for a meeting of county officials. After Abrams did so, McCormack and O'Carroll hung a "Life Energy" sign on it and showed the incinerator to Irish officials and investors. A glossy brochure for an Irish entity called Life Energy Corp. featured photos and biographies of Albert Reynolds and London mayoral candidate Steve Norris, plus pictures of incinerators that Stan Abrams had placed previously, in locations like Beijing. Abrams recalls a well-catered tour of Ireland in which McCormack showed off trash-collection sites he said had agreed to supply garbage to fuel the incinerators. When Abrams asked to see the trash contracts, he says McCormack brushed him off. Abrams also recalls standing on the switched-off burner to make adjustments, when McCormack urgently waved him to get off. McCormack had just ushered in some public officials and whispered that he'd told them the burner was operating at that moment at 3,000 degrees.
One star-struck guest of O'Carroll and McCormack's was Seamus Lagan, an electrician and businessman who says he was going into Dublin's posh Berkeley Court Hotel for an April 2000 meeting, just as Albert Reynolds was coming out. "I was a bit blown away by the names of the people involved," Lagan recalls. Reynolds was a member of Ireland's parliament at the time, and head of the country's dominant Fianna Fáil political party. Lagan joined the Life Energy Corp. venture, working in its Dundalk, Ireland, office alongside O'Carroll and McCormack. He helped them raise over $1 million, through private placements among more than 100 investors in the U.S., Ireland and the U.K.
O'Carroll seemed to be the money behind Chris McCormack, say Lagan and others who dealt with the promoters. At a company meeting in the summer of 2000, Irish officials asked O'Carroll why he was present. Lagan says that O'Carroll answered: "I'm the guy who writes a check for a million dollars, when a company needs a million dollars."
By this time, Nathaniel Energy's Stan Abrams had become disillusioned with his Irish allies -- so disillusioned that he took the burner's computer controls with him, to prevent McCormack and O'Carroll from using them. The planned venture evaporated, with McCormack complaining -- in a still-ongoing arbitration -- that the burner had failed to live up to Nathaniel's promises. In that Irish High Court arbitration, McCormack says the Nathaniel burner blew up and hurt a McCormack employee. A lawyer for LETH says that the arbitration will show that the burner now belongs to John O'Carroll, and that Nathaniel owes O'Carroll $2.7 million and 20% of Nathaniel's stock. Abrams calls these claims ridiculous.
Despite their falling out with their U.S. incinerator supplier, O'Carroll and McCormack continued to promote burners in the latter half of 2000. O'Carroll had worked in Russia, where one of his contacts was Dr. Valeri Romanov, a scientist who'd reportedly designed control systems for the type of modern Soviet submarines depicted in the novel The Hunt for Red October. Romanov brought other Soviet scientists -- and even the economically potent deputy mayor of Moscow, Josif Ordshonikidze -- to look at the Life Energy burner. Not long afterward, O'Carroll and Life Energy's staff learned, to their dismay, that Ordshonikidze had been seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.
McCormack announced that Romanov and a team of scientists would staff what he called the Romanov-Reynolds Research Institute at Life Energy. The Russian brain trust had some impressive technologies, according to McCormack, including a submarine antenna that could be redesigned for cellphone systems.
By the last quarter of 2000, the promoters still had no publicly held vehicle for their waste-to-energy venture. Their Irish company, Life Energy Corp., Ltd., had sold stock to too many people -- recalls O'Carroll's then-partner Bradley Ray -- to enter the U.S. markets without a registration filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ray says that the Irish firm's accountants recommended a registered public offering, but O'Carroll favored forming a new Irish entity that could merge, unregistered, with an already public U.S. concern. Reynolds and McCormack incorporated Life Energy & Technology Holdings, Ltd., and merged it in December 2000 into a bankrupt Nasdaq-listed firm called Health-Pak, in Utica, N.Y.
In initial filings with the SEC, the newly renamed Life Energy & Technology Holdings, Inc. -- or LETH -- listed three Isle of Man corporations as its principal owners. One of the three, with an 11.73% stake, was Chelise Investments. The name "Chelise" had been scribbled alongside O'Carroll's shareholdings, in Stan Abrams' meeting minutes for the aborted venture with Nathaniel. In addition, Chelise Investments was an investment vehicle mentioned in O'Carroll's 1990s trading records at the defunct New York stock broker Green-Cohn. O'Carroll's records became evidence in the federal class-action suit over the Scorpion Technologies fraud.
Former associates say O'Carroll controlled shares of LETH through Chelise. An internal shareholder list of the Irish firm Life Energy & Technology Holdings, Ltd. shows Chelise receiving one of the largest allocations of LETH stock, over 2.5 million shares -- with O'Carroll's two adult sons also getting chunks that were each almost as large as the 800,000 shares given to chairman Albert Reynolds. Another 560,000 shares went to a company called Abilene. The same name had been used on the Vienna account that had held Stephen Saccoccia's cash. Lawyers for O'Carroll and LETH say that O'Carroll isn't a LETH shareholder, employee or consultant, and has never had decision-making authority at the company. LETH's attorney says the "Chelise" in the Green-Cohn records is unrelated to the "Chelise" that is a LETH shareholder, and that O'Carroll "is neither involved in or a direct or beneficial owner of" the LETH shareholder Chelise.
Whatever O'Carroll's formal relationship with LETH, e-mails that Ray and Lagan say they got from him show O'Carroll trying to shape the firm's initial 8-K filings to the SEC. In a Nov. 19, 2000, e-mail to McCormack and others, O'Carroll complained that a proposed description of the business was too dull and "will not get us a $15 Stock."
"I would still like to put forward our best appearance," O'Carroll continued, "that is if we don't want to suck on cheap stock for the next 90 day's [sic]."
"We have put together a Scientific Team as good if not better than the U.S.A./N.A.S.A. team," he exhorted McCormack in another e-mail, 20 minutes later. "Are we going to play the role of the 'Demure Virgin' or the 'Raging Bull' or a combination of both. I suggest we give the Mkt a little hint, tease it a little bit, in the 8K."
A lawyer for LETH says that he can't confirm the authenticity of the e-mails viewed by Barron's.
Shares of Health-Pak (soon to be known as LETH) soared 100-fold, from five cents to $5.10, on the merger news.
AS LIFE ENERGY & TECHNOLOGY HOLDINGS became a U.S. public company, Seamus Lagan, the head of LETH's Irish operations, began questioning whether some of the 19 subsidiaries mentioned in November and December 2000 SEC filings were, in fact, owned by the company. Bills went unpaid at the Irish offices. More distressing for Lagan, dozens of Irish investors that he'd invited into McCormack's venture hadn't received tradeable shares for their money. On Feb. 9, 2001, Lagan expressed his concerns to McCormack and O'Carroll in a letter.
The next week -- according to a letter that Lagan later sent to Albert Reynolds and the fraud bureau of the Irish police -- he was confronted at his workplace by a group that included O'Carroll and McCormack and others. They accused Lagan of having stolen company files. Lagan says that one of the group -- not O'Carroll or McCormack -- threatened him, saying: "There's a lot of money in this game. People who've gotten in the way of that have ended up in a bog."
Frightened, Lagan says he quickly phoned the Dundalk police. LETH's lawyer denies that Lagan was threatened. Lagan left the company, then reported the threat and his other concerns in letters to Albert Reynolds in May 2001 and to the Irish police fraud bureau in December 2002. Lagan says Reynolds didn't reply.
In lengthy memos -- sent to Barron's, to several Irish newspapers and to government officials -- LETH says Lagan shouldn't be believed, because he's at odds with the company over his ownership of 300,000 shares of stock. The memos accuse Lagan of extortion and fraud, as well as the theft of the LETH shares. They also claim that a business venture of Lagan and Ray's is under investigation by the SEC, the FBI and the Manhattan district attorney. These memos about Lagan were written by former U.S. Sen. Vance Hartke, before his death last summer, and by Hartke's son Wayne, LETH's lawyer. Lagan denies the allegations and says he knows of no such investigations.
After slipping below a dollar in early 2001, LETH shares perked up again as the company announced deals for thousands of waste-to-energy burners. LETH's Website advertised an "Urgent" need for 1,500 engineers to set up systems around the world. The burner accrued endorsements from ex-Sen. Hartke, a Turkish Ottoman prince, an Abu Dhabi princess and the onetime ruler of Zambia.
LETH had big ambitions in Algeria. O'Carroll, McCormack and Reynolds arranged a visit to Algiers. But in a Jan. 28, 2001, e-mail, O'Carroll told the LETH staff to delay the trip because Algeria's minister for economic reforms wanted first to send a representative to Ireland, to brief them on "the current economic situation in Algeria, de-nationalization of the Oil, Mining, Electricity industries etc." O'Carroll instructed Life Energy's office manager to get Irish visas for the Algerian delegation "A.S.A.P."
In May 2001, LETH said that a Lebanese company would lease $430 million worth of burners. LETH also announced deals in Cameroon. According to Bradley Ray, the Cameroon deal was negotiated by O'Carroll, McCormack and Ray in Paris, where representatives from Cameroon feted them at a banquet with white-gloved attendants. While serving as LETH's CEO, McCormack continued to use his McCormack Consultants e-mail account to keep O'Carroll and Bradley Ray informed and to seek their comments on company matters. In June 2001 e-mails, for example, McCormack sent to O'Carroll and Ray the nonpublic drafts of a LETH letter to Cameroon's minister for energy. In August 2001 e-mails, O'Carroll tried to arrange sales of Algerian oil on behalf of LETH.
LETH's November 2001 income statement showed its first profits: $1.8 million, or six cents a share, on revenues of $12 million. The shares climbed from barely 50 cents to 2.50 by March 2002, valuing the company at almost $100 million. As it turned out, the millions of dollars in revenues and profits reported in November 2001 were accrual numbers -- meaning they measured anticipated, rather than cash, revenues. The company's balance sheet showed less than $2,000 in cash and a $3.8 million working-capital deficit. The $430 million Lebanese deal faltered, and LETH assigned the contract to its Moscow-based manufacturing partner, Alia Holdings. Alia owned preferred stock, convertible into 10 million shares of LETH (half of which Alia ultimately returned).
Moscow was also a base for John Napier, a security consultant, exercise-equipment distributor and British hero of the Falkland Islands war, whom Lagan recalls being in frequent phone contact with John O'Carroll. Napier got LETH shares when the company was listed on Nasdaq. Financial transfers to Napier were frequently an urgent matter around LETH offices, Lagan says. Although Napier's Moscow street address is the same as that of Alia Holdings, he says he knows nothing of the firm.
O'Carroll's e-mails show Napier as coordinating the Irish visits of LETH's Russian scientists. During one of these, according to former LETH associates, Napier demonstrated two curious Russian inventions. One was a scanner that supposedly could intercept and eavesdrop on cellphone calls. The other was a handheld device that could disable any cellphone within a small radius. Napier confirmed the visits to Barron's, but said he couldn't discuss the gadgets on the phone.
Despite announced deals to supply nearly 2,000 burners, Life Energy & Technology Holdings' financial statements showed no product revenue in the company's fiscal year ended May 2003, and no cash or current assets on the balance sheet. The company moved its head office from Ireland to the Utica, N.Y., location of its merger partner Health-Pak -- until September, that is, when Internal Revenue Service representatives appeared at Health-Pak's bankruptcy proceedings and demanded $175,000 for unpaid withholding taxes. The headquarters has since moved to the Virginia offices of LETH's attorney, Wayne Hartke. LETH later announced that it had raised over $30 million from Diamond Ridge Advisors, an obscure financial firm in North Carolina. Barron's call to that firm's chief executive wasn't returned.
Last July, McCormack announced that LETH had obtained permission to operate a Biosphere incinerator in Slidell, La. But state records show that it had gotten only a temporary permit to test the burner's air emissions. State environmental officials say the company hadn't obtained -- or applied for -- the necessary solid-waste permit. Slidell mayor Ben O. Morris says Life Energy didn't obtain the city's siting permission either, and declares that he won't accept such an incinerator until "Hell freezes over."
LETH claims that it invented the Biosphere after five years of research by the Romanov-Reynolds Institute, but acknowledges that it hasn't sought a patent for the incinerator. Lawyer Wayne Hartke, in a written response to questions from Barron's, says that applying for a patent would "publicly disclose the machine's workings." For years, the promoters' filings have also been sprinkled with terms bearing the trademark notice "TM", but Hartke says that LETH hasn't gotten around to registering its trademark claims.
When the company applied for a Louisiana environmental permit for a Biosphere burner, its application seemed to use the Irish air-emissions data from the much-maligned system that Nathaniel Energy shipped to Ireland in 2000. Hartke says the data came from an emissions test on a six-ton-per-hour Biosphere burner, performed after the smaller Nathaniel burner exploded. But the report LETH submitted to Louisiana bears the same dates, data tables, signatories and report number as a report on Nathaniel's system -- except that mentions of Life Energy Corp. and Nathaniel have been replaced by "Life Energy" and "Biosphere." Both versions concern a 0.75 ton-per-hour test, not six-tons-per-hour.
Hartke says that the data came from a Biosphere, and offers a November 2003 letter from the Irish testing agency as proof. The only thing the letter surely proves is that the testing agency was still owed $52,000 for the tests, 3½ years after they were done.
While continuing to lead LETH, Albert Reynolds seems to be scaling back other business activities. The former Irish prime minister didn't seek re-election in 2002 to the board of oil explorer Bula Resources, after that firm's censure and trading suspension on the Irish Stock Exchange. Those actions followed a controversy over Bula's $1.5 million payment to a general in Bahrain -- a payment now under investigation by Ireland's business regulators -- and from Reynolds' reported promotion of Life Energy & Technology Holdings while traveling on Bula business. Reynolds denies any impropriety at Bula or LETH.
The Bula controversy got wide press coverage in Ireland, but there has been little public discussion there of LETH. McCormack and O'Carroll have threatened Irish papers and Barron's with libel suits, when asked about O'Carroll. The warnings were accompanied by thick dossiers that alleged extortion and fraud by disaffected associates such as Seamus Lagan and Bradley Ray...and even an Irish journalist who tried reporting on LETH.
LETH lawyer Wayne Hartke says that his client believed that a Nathaniel Energy representative tried to extort an arbitration settlement from McCormack, by threatening to take Nathaniel's complaints to Barron's. Hartke even mentioned the possibility that Nathaniel Energy was bribing this reporter to write this story. Barron's is publishing this article only to inform the U.S. investing public. Nathaniel Energy's Abrams denies that there's been any extortion. "All we want is our burner back," he says.
John O'Carroll has served this reporter -- and Barron's publisher Dow Jones -- with papers for an Irish court action, alleging that this magazine libeled him in the questions it put to Hartke. On March 1, O'Carroll asked the High Court in Dublin for the extraordinary remedy of enjoining Barron's from even publishing this article. The court has yet to rule.
Meanwhile, LETH shares have once more been on a tear. They nearly tripled in recent weeks, to 2.95, on more than $10 million in cumulative trading volume. The activity may have been spurred by the company's announcement that a Russian city is interested in using Biospheres. Or perhaps it was the March 3 newsletter that was junk-e-mailed by a St. Maarten publisher, who acknowledged receiving $5,000 for its efforts. The mailing predicted that LETH stock would "Triple in 7 Days."
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