Embattled Sulja CEO quits
Harrow lumber company one of the hottest penny stocks in North America
BY GARY RENNIE STAR STAFF REPORTER
Petar Vucicevich, who has faced questioning recently by the RCMP and was under pressure from shareholders to release long-promised financial statements, resigned Tuesday as CEO of Sulja Brothers Building Materials Ltd.
The Harrow lumberyard has become one of the hot stocks in the penny markets in North America with 72.4 million shares traded Tuesday and a closing price of three cents a share. The stock’s been as high as 21 cents a share in the past year.
Steve Sulja, the son of the founder, is returning as CEO, according to a company news release that was confirmed by Vucicevich. Sulja didn’t respond to a request for an interview left with staff at the Harrow lumberyard.
The news release said Steve Sulja wouldn’t be taking any phone calls and “will be communicating with our shareholders strictly through our website and through our press releases.”
While he wasn’t planning to leave the area, Vucicevich said the future of his proposed $20-million development in Colchester Village was under review. “You haven’t chased me away yet,” he joked.
Vucicevich said he was considering getting new partners for the Colchester development, which originally included plans for a Kronk’s boxing gym, a cheese factory, a spindle factory and accommodations and shops with a Vienna theme. He acquired close to $2 million of vacant land and homes for the development.
Interviewed outside the Colchester home of John Sulja, the founder of Sulja building materials, Vucicevich declined to answer questions about the company’s much-touted overseas operations — including the purchase of land on Al Reem Island in United Arab Emirates.
Vucicevich has said he’s purchased a hotel site on Al Reem for US$29 million as a director of another company, Consultech Construction Management Inc.
Investors in the stock have had high hopes that Sulja would benefit as a supplier for the development of a US$645 million hotel on the site on Al Reem Island. Vucicevich declined to give The Star a copy of the deed for the hotel site.
According to State of Michigan records, Consultech was incorporated Dec. 13, 2002, but was dissolved on July 15, 2005. Vucicevich said the company was no longer active in Ontario or Michigan, but still operated overseas. He wouldn’t supply a list of the names, addresses and telephone numbers for the 40 overseas employee’s he claimed in a previous interview to have.
“After numerous meetings in the past five days, it was simply felt that I accept his two-month premature resignation,” Steve Sulja said in the news release. Vucicevich’s Kore International company — which was spearheading the Colchester development — wouldn’t be involved in the Sulja operation either, the press release said.
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